What Cannot Be Broken - The Complete Collection
by Ari Moriarty
Summary: Re-uploaded by request. The Investigation Team and former members of SEES must band together to rescue both of their leaders from the confines of the Great Seal, and to work together to overcome a series of subsequent calamities that threaten their lives, their world, and their dreams for the future. Features various pairings, including Minako x Adachi.
1. Author's Note

**Author's Note:**

So, as a few of you noticed, I took all of these old stories down a couple of days ago.

Honestly, I was disappointed in them. They were the first stories that I had ever written on this site, and although they aren't terrible, I wasn't impressed. I've started working on other things that I like better and am more invested in, so it seemed logical for me to take these stories down.

Several of you, however, were not pleased when I did that.

I was really surprised by the fact that some of you wanted the chance to re-read these stories, and I'm very grateful that you're that interested in them. I'd never want to deprive you of something you genuinely wanted, so I have gone ahead and uploaded this collection.

In this collection, you will find the ENTIRE series, including all of the snippets, one-shots, and alternate universe stories. I have uploaded the stories in order, so that you can read the entire collection from start to finish and get the full experience.

Thank you very much for reading, for enjoying, and for brightening my life with your enthusiasm.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Ari Moriarty


	2. What Cannot Be Broken

**Prologue - Three Years Later**

**Author's Note:**

This story uses characters and situations taken from the Persona 3 Portable Female Protagonist storyline, as well as Persona 4 The Golden. For that reason, some stuff in here doesn't quite fit with the storyline and characters of the male protagonist in Persona 3, or with FES. Maybe I'll write one from that perspective next.

I'm very new to fanfiction, and I'm trying it out as a lark, so please, do review and comment to let me know if you like what I'm writing! There's no other way for me to know if I'm doing it right…

Okay, I think that's everything. This'll be fun, right? Sure it will.

Sincerely,

Ari

**Prologue**

**Winter vacation in Inaba – One year after the defeat of Ameno-sagiri, Three years after the defeat of Nyx**

Snow had started to fall outside the windows of the Dojima residence. Nanako stared out at it for a few minutes, eyes wide with delight as she imagined just how many snow men and snow teddies she could possibly fit into the front yard. Then she ran as fast as she could over to the room where her cousin Yu was staying for the winter holidays.

"Big bro! Big bro, it's snowing! Come and see!" She tried valiantly not to bounce up and down outside his door as she waited for him to open it. That was something a seven year old girl might do. Eight year old girls were dignified. They did not bounce up and down…at least, not much.

Strangely enough, Yu didn't open the door. "Um, big bro? Helloooo! Come out, it's the first snow of the year!"

A second quick glance at the window showed Nanako that it was dark outside. Belatedly, she had an idea. "Oh, are you asleep?" Well, she thought, probably not anymore… "Um, I'm sorry…I didn't mean to wake you…I mean…it's really pretty outside! Tomorrow we can play in it!"

Still, there was no response from the bedroom. Nanako frowned. Something wasn't right. "Hey, Big bro? Are you in there?"

It wasn't the polite thing to do. It wasn't, honestly, something that Nanak normally would have let herself do. Still, something didn't feel right, and she let herself do the impulsive thing and pushed the door just slightly open, peering around it into the room.

Yu was stretched out on the bed, still wearing his school uniform. His eyes were closed, and he looked as though hd' been asleep for hours. Nanako knew she should leave, but something just looked…wrong. He was so quiet, so still. When her father slept, his chest bounced up and down, and he made little snorking noises when he breathed. Yu wasn't doing anything like that. He was just…lying there.

All of a sudden, Nanako didn't feel well. Something bad was happening, and she didn't want to be alone in that room with her cousin anymore. "Help, dad!" The words came out louder than she'd meant it to. From the bottom of the stairs, she heard Dojima jump to his feet.

"Nanako? What's wrong?"

Ryotaro Dojima was used to emergencies, and he was standing next to her in a matter of moments, staring down at Yu's unmoving form on the bed. Carefully, he reached out and touched a hand to Yu's forehead, then to skin on the boys' throat. "No pulse," he muttered. "Nanako, he's not breathing. We need to call an ambulance."

"What? He's not breathing?" Nanako reached out and shook Yu by the arm. "Hey, Big Bro! Wake up! Please, wake up!"

"An ambulance, Nanako." Dojima's voice was harsh. Frightened, Nanako turned around a made a dash for the phone. Just before she left the room, she turned back for one more look at Yu's face. It was awful, she thought, her feet pounding down the steps two at a time towards the kitchen. His face hadn't looked like anything. It just had this terrible, blank, vague look on it, like he'd been cut off before he'd had a chance to think about anything. It was the scariest thing she'd ever seen, and for Nanako Dojima, that was saying a lot.

**The Velvet Room – The same evening**

"Welcome…to the velvet room."

Minako Arisato opened her eyes. She blinked. She breathed. She tried it again. It still worked. Wait, what? What was going on?

"Ah, our valued guest. What a pleasure to see you again after such a long absence."

Slowly, Minako focused on the figure in front of her. He certainly wasn't much to look at. Hunched over, with a long, pointy nose and a maniacal sort of glint in his big, bulging eyes, he wasn't exactly the sort of sight that most girls would want to wake up to.

Minako, on the other hand, was happy to see anyone at the moment. Igor would be able to tell her what was happening. Igor always knew what was happening, usually before anyone else did. It was creepy. Helpful, but very creepy.

"Um," she said.

"You must be somewhat disoriented after your deep sleep," said Igor.

"Um, yes." Minako's head did feel a little fuzzy. "How did I-?"

"What," asked Igor, interrupting her smoothly, "do you remember?"

Good question, thought Minako. She thought about it for a moment. It took several long seconds for the bleariness in her mind to clear away, before she realized.

"Oh," she said. "I think…I think that I'm dead."

Igor chuckled that alarmingly creepy chuckle of his. "Well done," he murmured. "Yes, in a manner of speaking, you are…dead. Or at least, you were. It seems that you have been granted a temporary reprieve. Your soul is free to return to the world…for a time."

There are reprieves from death? Like…resuscitation? None of this was making sense. Minako took a deep breath, something that she still wasn't sure she should even be able to do, and tried to relax. There was something else going on here, something she couldn't quite focus on. Something was nagging at the back of her mind, a memory that would help clear everything up. What was it she couldn't remember?

Then, slowly, it all came swimming back to her in gentle little waves of memory. The people she'd met, the friends she'd made, the contract she'd agreed to without even realizing what it was she'd gotten into the first place. She remembered the end, the final stand, the way she'd never have survived without the love of the people around her, and then…the sacrifice. She remembered her mission, her curse, the duty of the great seal. But then, if she'd been granted, as Igor had put it, "a reprieve," then what had become of the seal? What would become of the world, of the people she'd essentially died to protect?

As if he'd read her thoughts, which she wasn't altogether sure he hadn't, Igor spoke up. "There has been…a new arrangement. Another soul has taken your place as the seal."

"Who? Whose soul?" Minako was alarmed. Had one of her friends found a way to sacrifice themselves to try and bring her back? That wasn't supposed to even be possible, how could someone have-

"There seems to have been a mistake." Igor, for once, sounded almost worried. "Something has changed in the flow of your fate and the future is uncertain. I…do not understand."

"You said this was temporary," said Minako, hearkening back to one of the first things he'd said when she'd woken up. "A 'temporary reprieve.' Am I going to die again?"

Igor shrugged. The gesture looked ridiculous on him, but for some reason it definitely wasn't funny. "I eagerly await to see what fate now has in store for you. Your choices, as always, will determine what path lies open to your future."

A few moments of silence elapsed before Minako asked, "So, what do I do now?"

"Now, you will wake up, in your world." Even as he spoke, Igor's face began to fade blurrily away from view, and Minako felt her eyelids getting heavy. "Don't worry. I'm sure we'll meet again when you feel the time is right."

Unfortunately, he's probably right, thought Minako, as Igor and the Velvet Room faded into black. He sort of made a habit of being right. Again, it was creepy.

**Chapter One**

**Author's Note: **Wow! Thanks to everyone who is reading/following/reviewing/favoriting the story already! You guys are fantastic! Hmm, "favoriting" isn't really a word…can I say that anyway? In any case, thanks so much!

**Chapter One**

When Minako awoke again, she was lying on the ground next to a rapidly departing train. Signs above her head read "Yasoinaba Station." People who had just gotten off the train were walking by, and had begun to stare at her and point. She quickly got to her feet and moved away from the train, dusting herself off as she went.

Minako had done a fair share of traveling, shunted from place to place after her parents had passed away. She was sure she'd been to Inaba before, in fact, not too long ago. Once she thought about it, she realized that Inaba was the place where she'd had her last school retreat with the women's sports teams. The volleyball and tennis teams had both gone, to stay at a beautiful place called the Amagi Inn. Idly, she wondered if the Amagi Inn served any food that she could afford. Come to think of it, did she have any money?

Minako looked down at herself, and was only slightly surprised to see that she was wearing her Gekkoukan High school uniform. At least whatever almighty powers were steering her fate had been kind enough to grant her the winter version. Otherwise she'd be freezing. As it was, the skirt was pretty short, and short skirts, though cute in any weather, were definitely more decorative than useful.

So, she reflected, she was without any money or any place to go, dressed in an out-of-town high school uniform that would stand out like a sore thumb in any crowd, and was at a loss for what to do next. This was going to be an interesting day. What she wouldn't give, she thought, for just one friendly face.

Then, just like that, she saw him, striding through the center of the crowd on the platform. Junpei Iori looked different than he had the last time she'd seen him. There was unshaven stubble on his chin, and dark circles under his eyes. He looked older and a lot more serious than he'd ever been when she'd met him in the high school hallways. Even so, Minako didn't doubt for a moment that it was him. He had the same confident swagger, the same hint of a leftover smile on his face. "Junpei!" calling out to him, she pushed forward through the crowd until she could catch his eye. "Hey, Junpei, wait for me!"

He looked up at her in surprise, and his eyes went momentarily wide as he stared, mouth hanging open, into her face. "Holy shit…" he muttered, and seemed to be about to say something else, but then shook his head.. "Nah, sorry…I mean, sorry to stare like that. You just look a lot like somebody I knew a long time ago, I guess. Yeah. Jeez. Um." He laughed. "I guess I must sound pretty weird, huh? Anyway. How do you know my name? Do I know you?"

"Yes. You do." Minako took a deep breath. She'd forgotten, for a moment, that Junpei wouldn't be expecting to see her. After all, she was dead. Sort of. She had been dead. That was going to be a hard subject to broach. "Just…don't freak out," she said.

"Why would I freak out?" Junpei was grinning, the same old gung-ho grin that he'd always used to cheer them all up when they'd been lost in dark, mysterious towers trying to fight off the end of the world. Minako bathed in it. She felt better already.

"Okay," she said. "It's me, Minako. Minako Arisato. We're in high school together. Or maybe we were. Hey, hold on, you said you wouldn't freak out!"

She added this last part because, as soon as she'd said her name, something strange had happened to Junpei. He wasn't grinning anymore, but he didn't look shocked or amazed, either. Instead, he looked angry. A furious light came into his eyes, and he clenched his fists and shoved them into his pockets, turning his eyes away from her.

"That's not funny, man," he muttered. "That's kinda sick. Who the hell are you? How'd you even know about Minako? Dude, what kind of person plays a trick like this one, anyway? It's been three years, I want to forget about it. I just…I want to forget, so get lost. Leave me alone, okay? I'm not gonna play this game."

Three years? Minako swallowed hard. That was a lot of time. No wonder he looked so much older. And she, of course, still in her school uniform, probably didn't look like she'd aged a day. Maybe she hadn't. It sure hadn't felt like any time had passed, but then again, it hadn't felt like…anything. Is that what death was, really? Just…a lot of nothing at all? Or was that just her death, or rather, her rebirth as the great seal?

"Junpei," Minako said again, "please, look at me. I'm not joking. You're right, nobody would play a trick like this, so obviously this isn't a trick."

"I'm getting out of here," said Junpei, and he made to move away from her. Impulsively, Minako grabbed his arm. Junpei looked as though he was going to hit her, but she held on tight anyway, and forced him to look at her.

"I know that there is no way this makes sense right now," she insisted. "I don't understand it any more than you do, but please. I'm lost, and I'm confused…I need you to believe me. To believe in me. You always believed in me, right? I rely on you, I trust you. That's how we defeated Nyx, how we stopped the end of the world! Please, Junpei. I need you."

Junpei stopped trying to struggle way from her and stared, the anger fading from his eyes. "There's no way you could know all that, about all that stuff," he muttered, "unless…"

"Yeah," said Minako. "Unless I'm really me. So…"

"Mina-tan?" He sounded more frightened than anything else, as he reached out and, very hesitantly, touched his fingers to Minako's forehead, then to her cheek. "No way…you're dead. I was there when you died. It was awful. It was the worst thing…" his voice trailed off, and he swallowed hard. "You were cold. We tried waking you up, but you wouldn't open your eyes. We tried everything. You're dead. I know you're dead."

"Apparently not anymore." Minako shrugged.

Junpei took Minako to the parking lot, and drove her back to his home through the winding country roads of Inaba. He lived in a quiet neighborhood full of nosy old men who all seemed to be peeking their heads of doors and windows when Junpei helped Minako out of the car.

Great, she thought to herself. Just what he probably needs right now, a bunch of old neighbors gossiping about how he brought an underage girl back to his place.

They went inside and he made her a cup of coffee and gave her a seat on the sofa in front of the television. Television seemed to be a big thing here in Inaba. She could hear the television of the guy next door blaring through the thin walls.

Junpei was moving jerkily, like he was acting on some sort of internal autopilot.

"You know," said Minako, forcing a smile, "you'd think after three years you'd be a little happier to see me."

"You don't get it," said Junpei. "I don't believe this is happening. I'm going to wake up any second and realize that I'm having some sort of twisted guilt dream that I won't be able to shake for the rest of the day. That happens. A lot."

"You dream about me?" Minako tried to sound flirty, hoping to make him laugh and shake him out of his stupor.

Junpei didn't laugh. Instead, he shuddered. "Yeah," he said. "All the time. I keep dreaming about what your face looked like at the end. I see that when I close my eyes, most nights. Sometimes I see it when I'm awake, too."

"Oh." Minako sighed. "Junpei…"

Junpei bit his lip. "I don't know how you're back here," he said, "but I hope it's for real. I hope I wake up tomorrow and you're still here. You had us all pretty worked up, you know that?"

His voice was shaking, and Minako thought she saw something glimmering in the corners of his eyes.

"Are you crying?" she asked, genuinely surprised. Over-macho Junpei, always trying to be the hero, wasn't usually the tearful type. It was rare for him to lose it like this.

"Of course not," muttered Junpei, choking on the words. "Why'd you think I was crying?"

"Big boys don't cry?" asked Minako, with a smile. On a whim, she reached out, and wrapped her arms around him. Junpei stood completely still for a moment, then reached out and hugged her back, tentatively a first, then with more and more confidence.

"Oh man," he said, "you are real. Oh god, this is amazing. I mean, you're really here. You're alive."

Then, he did cry. Minako sat there and held him while the big, manly tears poured unabashedly out of him on to her shoulders and hair.

An hour or so later, the atmosphere in the room had totally changed. Junpei seemed like a different person, laughing, beaming, and cracking his old jokes. He couldn't sit still, and was standing one minute, then flopping back on to the couch another. He didn't seem to be able to figure out what to do with his hands.

"So, wait," he was saying, for probably the third time. "So, what you're telling me is that that seal thing, the thing that you made to stop Nyx, somebody else is holding that thing up, now? And so…they just let you go? Cause they don't need you anymore?"

Somehow, that sounded a bit too simple to Minako, but she nodded. "That's…more or less what I think happened."

"But um…you died, right? And so, when you died, your body…" Junpei was looking uncertainly down at her school uniform. Minako self consciously wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "I mean, when the body dies, there's…decay and stuff, right? I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but you look pretty good, for a zombie chick."

"I am not," muttered Minako," a zombie, okay? I said, I don't know what happened, or how this works, but can we just not talk about the whole 'decay' thing? Maybe this is just how it goes when your soul is, you know, fighting the fight for good and justice. You get an extra body. I don't know, okay?"

"Yeah, that's just as likely as everything else that's happened," agreed Junpei, shrugging. "So, if you're still sixteen, I guess that makes me your senpai now, huh?" He laughed. "Kinda weird, saying it like that. Wow, this is so freaky…do the others know?"

"No…no, you're the first person I saw when I woke up. I was in the Velvet Room, and then I just…sort of came here. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't found you." Minako sighed. "Honestly, it's been so long, I don't know where anyone else is anymore. I want to see everyone, and there are…there are things I want to say."

"Yeah, I bet." Junpei nodded. "There are things we all want to say. I'll be honest with you, though, everybody's gonna think you're some kind of crazy nutjob imposter. You can't blame 'em, either, people just don't come back from the dead."

"No, I won't blame them," agreed Minako, "but I've been given another chance, for some reason, and I don't want to waste it." She carefully avoided mentioning the fact that she wasn't entirely sure how long her new lease on life was going to last. After all, Igor had said it was up to her choices. Wasn't everyone's life really like that? Maybe he hadn't meant anything else by it. She wanted to believe that…but she didn't.

"Yeah, well, you're in luck." Junpei looked proud of himself. "I've kept in touch with a lot of the old gang. We're gonna go on a mission, we'll get the band back together!" He looked excited. "I gotta find the phone, we're gonna make some calls. Wow, are they in for the surprise of their lives. I hope we dont' cause any heart attacks, or whatever."

Minako smiled and tried not to show it, but in the back of her mind, part of her was worried. Of course she wanted to see everyone again, more than she wanted anything else in the whole world. If there was anything she could have, it would be to get her life back the way it had been right before the end, when everyone was happy together and the world was a better place. Still, from what Junpei had said when she'd first seen him, it sounded like maybe some of them wouldn't want to hear from her. She'd hurt them all terribly, even if she'd never meant to for a moment, and sometimes it was easie to forget and move on with life. Would everyone be happy to see her again? Would they all even remember?

"So," Junpei was saying, "who do you want to see first? You tell old Junpei, I'm what you might call a real social butterfly these days."

Minako laughed, conjuring up a mental image of Junpei as a huge, confused looking butterfly.

"I know, I know," Junpei said. "It's Akihiko, right? Of course, you'll want to know about Akihiko."

Minako's heart sank. She did want to know, and she didn't. It was a complicated set of feelings.

**Chapter Two**

**Author's Note: **In response to **TarePanda11**'s question about Akihiko...sorry, but I'm not telling. Wouldn't want to give away the surprise! Don't worry, though, Minako will encounter several of her former love interests in this story, so there will definitely be some romantic entanglement. In response to **Abyss of Memories, **you're definitely on the right track! Yosuke taking over temporarily for Yu…that's pretty much exactly what's going to happen. This story takes place several years after the events of FES, though, so hopefully it won't be too similar…

Thanks so much to you both, and to **MegaPotato** for reading and commenting!

**Chapter Two**

Junpei and Minako sat down to a makeshift dinner of leftover grilled steak from the local store.

"I bet you're pretty hungry," Junpei said, as Minako tried to manage to be polite and dainty while tearing ravenously into a hunk of steak. "After all, you haven't eaten in, like, three years."

"Thank you for the food," murmured Minako, a little bit embarrassed. She wiped the sauce-stained corners of her mouth with a napkin that Junpei passed over to her. "I guess I am hungry."

"Don't mention it." Junpei looked delighted. "I mean, it's not like I haven't seen you eat too much before." After a moment's pause, he added, looking down fixedly at his plate, "besides, this makes you seem more real. I mean. Real people get hungry. Ghosts…probably don't, right?"

"Well, don't worry, I'm not a ghost." Minako wolfed down another bite of steak. "I could probably stand to lose a few pounds, too."

Junpei stared at her. "Seriously? You just freakin' came back from the dead, and you're already worried about your weight? I just don't get girls sometimes…" Shaking his head, he swallowed a mouthful and sat back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. "Okay, so. You wanted to know about Akihiko, right?"

Minako tried not to look worried. "Yeah, of course," she said. "So, where is he? What happened to him after Gekkoukan?"

"Akihiko-senpai went to college, some big university with an even bigger focus on sports," Junpei told her. "He got a boxing scholarship or something like that."

Minako nodded. Of course, that made sense. After all, he had been a champion athlete, always working on his strength and his stamina. "And then?" she asked.

"And then," continued Junpei, "about a year into school, he suddenly just dropped out and moved right back to Tatsumi Port Island. We all thought it was totally weird, until we found out that he'd been picked up by some local professional boxing team, and they were giving him tons of money to fight for them! So, after he started making the big bucks, apparently he got back in touch with Ken-kun, and started using that money to help Ken get some good tutors, or whatever. I mean, Ken-kun's always been really smart, but it's been hard for him to get ahead, with his mother and father both dead, and everything. Anyway, they're both still living not too far from Gekkoukan. I'm gonna call him up right after dinner; I don't know what he's going to do when he finds out that you're back. He'll probably beat the shit out of me for being the first one to see you."

Minako smiled. So, Akihiko was looking out for Ken. Well, that made sense too. Of course, after everything they'd been through together, they'd want to keep an eye on each other. Yeah, that was the way it was supposed to be.

Then, after a deep breath,Minako asked the hard question, the one she'd been trying not to think too much about. "Um…so….do you know if Akihiko's seeing anybody?"

"Huh?" For a moment, Junpei looked confused. Then understanding dawned, and he bit his lip. "Um, wow, no, I don't really know. I mean, I know there have been a few women since…well, since he graduated from high school, but I don't think there was anything serious. I mean…you were pretty important to him. It was probably hard to move on..."

I want to be important to him _now_, thought Minako. Why did there have to be so many years between the two of them? If only she'd found a way to come back sooner. She'd wanted Junpei to say that Akihiko had waited for her, that there hadn't been anyone else, but…who was she kidding? Hadn't she wanted Akihiko to be happy? Of course he'd moved on. He'd never expected her to come back. Again, that was the way it was supposed to be…right?

Minako's heart felt like a lead weight. Still, no reason to tell Junpei that. She'd come back from the dead. She'd been granted a "reprieve." She was supposed to be ecstatic, enjoying every moment. It was time, she decided, to make an effort.

"Well." Minako tried to force the disappointed thoughts out of her mind, and she planted the smile firmly back on her face. "I can't wait to see him again. And how is everybody else? Have you heard from Yukari? Fuuka? What about Mitsuru?"

"Uh, well." Junpei frowned, and looked like he was about to say something, but apparently changed his mind. Clearing his throat, he said, a little more loudly and cheerfully than he needed to, "Mitsuru's in school somewhere. I actually haven't talked to her in a while, but you can bet she's the top of her class and doing whatever she wants, right? Akihiko will probably know where to find her, we can ask him. Yukari met some guy who lived out near where her mom is at. She acts like it was love at first sight. I was surprised; Yuka-tan was always kinda prickly to me at school. I figured she wasn't the type to fall so fast. They're getting married in the summer. I think she's still helping out at one of those charity centers, like, for women from broken homes. She seems pretty into it. And, Mina-tan, you're gonna love this; Fuuka started a catering business."

Minako raised an eyebrow. "Oh no. You're not serious." She couldn't help but imagine people getting violently sick after eating some of the surprise ingredients that Fuuka tended to cook into her food, always with the best of intentions.

Junpei must have seen the look on her face, because he laughed. "Nah, she's doing really well. I think she's got a partner, somebody who's keeping her on track and making sure she doesn't poison anybody."

"That's a relief." Minako knew that Fuuka must be really happy, being able to make things to help people celebrate or cheer them up. Minako remembered with some unwelcome disgust the many things that Fuuka had baked and made her try, some of which had been inedible, others of which she'd unfortunately had to eat and then discreetly vomit out later. "I'm glad she's found her niche."

"Oh," said Junpei, "but everybody's gonna want to give you all the details in person. It's gonna get pretty crazy in here when I start making phone calls. Don't worry if I have to raise my voice, okay? Nobody's gonna believe me at first…but don't you worry, I'll get 'em here. You can count on me. It's gonna be the reunion of the century! "

Junpei stood up and started to walk into the kitchen, where he kept the phone. Just before leaving the room, he turned around, stared at Minako for a moment, and muttered, "Just…just be here when I get back, okay?"

"I will be," Minako assured him. "I'm not going anywhere."

At least, not yet, she thought, but decided to keep that sentiment to herself.

**Chapter Three**

**Author's note: **Two chapters in one day? What? It must be the weekend!

**Chapter Three**

Minako busied herself cleaning up the dishes from dinner, while Junpei began making phone calls in the other room. Several times, she heard him say things like "Hey, wait, seriously, I'm not making this up!" or "Aw, man, he hung up on me…" When she got tired of listening to him getting frustrated, or raising his voice at the person on the other end of the line, she retired to the living room to watch television.

The news was on, and it seemed for a while as though nothing exciting was happening in Inaba. Minako wasn't surprised. After all, Inaba did seem to be a pretty small, quiet town. It must be nice, she thought, to live somewhere where you didn't have to fight monsters and fend for your life every second or third day of the week. Just as she was reflecting o what it might be like to live a normal, mundane, run-of-the-mill life, the reporter on the news started saying something that got Minako's full attention.

"The mysterious death of a seventeen year old student has rocked the hearts and minds of people across the Inaba region. Yu Narukami, visiting friends and family in Inaba for the winter holiday vacation, died yesterday of mysterious and unknown causes. His cousin, eight year old Nanako Dojima, found him lying dead in his bed around 9:00 PM last night. The doctors are still at a loss as to the cause of the boy's death, and an investigation is underway by the Inaba police force. Is it possible that this is another victim of the series of murders which seemed to have ended so abruptly only a year ago? Let me tell you, I sure hope that's not the case."

Minako wasn't sure exactly why, but she felt the hackles on the back of her neck rise as she watched the picture of Yu Narukami flash across the television screen. She'd never seen him before, she was sure of that, and yet something about his face was familiar to her. It was…strange that he'd died at around exactly the same time that she'd suddenly been allowed to live again. Well, no, she reasoned with herself, it wasn't exactly strange. It was suspicious. Then again, of course, people died every day. Why should she get all worked up over this Narukami guy in particular? It probably had nothing to do with her, and was just one of those unfortunate coincidences that so often took place between life and death.

The news program showed a picture of his friends and family, gathered around his hospital room, most of them crying or staring around at each other in shock. There she was, that eight year old girl that had found her cousin's body. There were a couple of sobbing older girls, too, and a shaggy-haired boy with headphones around his neck, who looked angry enough to murder somebody himself.

So that's what it looks like, she thought, when somebody dies. That's what grief looks like. She knew what it felt like, of course, but she'd never really considered what it would look like to lose someone she cared about. She'd always either been the loser, or been the one who was lost. She'd never watched it happen to someone else.

It looked awful. Minako felt a pang of real guilt. She'd caused something like that to her friends, too. Even if she had done it to save the world, with what honestly had been the best and most noble of intentions, she'd made her loved ones grieve like crazy. That wasn't a pleasant thought.

And now, of course, these people were grieving for this Narukami guy. There was no way that could be her fault too, right?

Someone had taken her place, she knew…was it a coincidence that she'd ended up in Inaba, the same place where Yu Narukami had been before he'd passed away? She desperately wanted to believe that she was imaging things, and yet…

"Phew, okay." Junpei came into the living room, mercifully interrupting her train of thought. "I'm pretty sure everybody is either in a car or on a train right now on their way to us. It took some doing, but I think we're about to have a house full of people freakin' out. Jeez, I guess I should have gone shopping first…what are they all gonna eat?"

Minako blinked at him. "You sound like someone's mother."

"Yeah, uh, I guess I do." Junpei shrugged. "Seriously, though, they're gonna eat all my food and then what am I gonna do?"

That reminded Minako of something. "Hey, Junpei. You never told me what you're up to these days." Inwardly, she was ashamed of herself for not even bothering to ask. He'd rescued her from the train station, fed her, and she hadn't even bothered to ask about what he'd been doing for three years? That was pretty much the definition of the word 'selfish.'

"Oh, sure." Junpei grinned. "I'm a clerk at this guy's shop in town. It's not just any shop, though; you've gotta see this place. This guy, Daidara-san, he sells all these crazy weapons and armor that he makes himself! He calls it 'art,' but this stuff could seriously hurt somebody. Oh, and since I work at the front desk, so he doesn't have to, I get some sweet discounts."

"Discounts?" Minako was confused. "What do you need fancy weapons for, Junpei?"

"Ah, nothing really." Junpei sighed. "But they sure do look pretty cool, right? Anyway, I'll take you there tomorrow. You can meet the boss."

"Um…actually…" Minako looked sheepish for a moment. "If we could maybe go by an outlet mall, or a local boutique…I don't have any other clothes. Or," she added, after a moment's reflection, "any money, either…"

Junpei eyed her. "Okay," he said. "Right. So, first order of business; we've gotta find you a job. But yeah, we'll do that tomorrow. I'm beat, I bet you are too. Let's get some sleep."

Minako had to admit that she was definitely tired. Thinking about sleeping only made it worse. Trying to stifle a yawn, she looked around and asked, "but…where will I…?"

Junpei grabbed a blanket from the closet and threw it over the back of the couch. "I know I'm supposed to often the girl the bed, but would you mind sleeping on the sofa? It…would be kind of strange, having a girl in my bed, when I'm not there. Not that I'm trying to get us to go to bed together. That's…definitely not what I meant." Junpei seemed to have turned pink.

"The sofa sounds fantastic." Minako sank gratefully backwards until her head was resting on one of the sofa's arms. "Junpei, you're..my best friend. You're the best friend a girl could have. Thanks for all of this. Thanks for letting me feel so normal."

"Don't mention it." Junpei started to walk up towards the stairs. "I've got your back, okay? Now get some sleep, we're gonna have a crazy day tomorrow."

He started up the stairs, just as Minako began to close her eyes. She heard his footsteps stop on the landing, and looked over to see him watching her with uncertainty and doubt in his eyes again.

"You're still gonna be here when I wake up, right?" he asked. "I want you to promise."

"I promise," Minako insisted. A few minutes later, she drifted off to sleep.

Minako had hoped for a long, dreamless night, but it wasn't meant to be. Almost as soon as she fell asleep, she found herself again in the Velvet Room.

This time, however, something was different. Igor was nowhere to be seen, and the only occupant of the room was a tall, attractive woman, with silver-blond waves of hair, and a very concerned look on her face. She was seated in a chair by herself to the right of where Igor usually sat. Minako was sure she'd never seen her before.

"Welcome to the Velvet Room," said the woman. "I'm sorry, but my master is not in right now."

"Um, that's okay." Minako shrugged. "I think there must have been a mistake, I just want to get some sleep. If Igor didn't call me here, then-!"

"I'm afraid that I called you here." The woman sighed. "Please forgive me this terrible imposition. My master would be furious if he ever found out that I had forced a guest into the Velvet Room without his permission, and yet, I…I needed to see you. Oh," Putting on a small, polite smile, she inclined her head, and added, "My name is Margaret. It is unforgiveable that I have been so rude to our valued guest."

"It's no problem." Minako peered into the shadows around Margaret's chair. She didn't see Elizabeth or Theodore anywhere. "What did you want to see me about?"

Margaret didn't say anything for a moment. She seemed to be thinking, staring into Minako's eyes as she did so. Finally, she whispered, "You are the seal, aren't you? Or at least…you were the seal, until very recently."

"Yes," said Minako, "I'm the seal."

Margaret inhaled sharply. "Then it's true," she said. "Fate has been changed. The flow of the future is altered. There is a new seal."

"I think so." Minako was starting to get uncomfortable. "At least, that's what Igor told me."

"Listen carefully, Minako Arisato." Margaret's voice was still polite, but now hushed and urgent. She leaned forward in her chair to get closer to Minako's startled face. "I do not know if there is much time until my master returns. You must heed what it is I have to say, before it is too late. Do you remember Elizabeth and Theodore, the occupants of this room who resided here during your first time on earth?" Minako nodded, and Margaret continued. "Elizabeth and Theodore are my brother and sister. Over a year ago, they suddenly left this place, insisting that they could not rest until they had found a cure for the one who had saved the world by becoming the great seal. Their goal was to find a way to release the child who had become the seal, and to allow that child to again live on earth. You see, they'd grown to care about that child very much."

Minako remembered Elizabeth and Theodore. She had frequently taken both of them out to explore the human world, and they had been charmed by the people they'd seen and the things they'd found. In the end, they'd become almost her friends, even if friendship was difficult between people who were from totally different physical and psychological worlds.

"Yeah," said Minako. "I cared about them too."

"When they left this place, "Margaret was saying, ignoring Minako's interjection, "My master summoned me here to take their place, to assist the guests who enter this room and to meet the needs of their minds and souls. Although happy to fulfill my duties to my master, I confess that I was desperate to learn the whereabouts of my sister and brother, in hopes that I might someday bring them back and that we might all be a family again. I fear that your sudden return to earth is the work of Elizabeth and Theodore, and that they have finally found what they have been seeking all of this time."

"Why is that bad?" asked Minako, although she thought she might already know the answer.

"Because," insisted Margaret, "it seems that in order to procure your release, they have sacrificed the life of someone else, another former guest of this room, whose heart is pure and whose soul is strong, just as yours is." After a moment, she added, in a quieter voice, "he is someone who was once very close to me as well. We are not without the ability to form attachments, here. I…I do not wish for his demise."

Minako held her breath."Yu Narukami," she said. Margaret just nodded. "I knew it," muttered Minako. "I knew it wasn't a coincidence."

"Yu Narukami was once a visitor of ours, a young man with power and potential not unlike your own. With the help of his treasured friends, he saved the world from a menace that presented itself in a very different way from the way in which the end of the world presented itself to you. The two of you are, in some ways, two sides of the same circle, to parts of the same whole. It is your strength and your ability to use persona that has prevented the world from dissolving into ruin more than once. It seems he has now been chosen to bear the same burden that was once yours, although…I confess I do not know how Elizabeth and Theodore achieved this. Fate and the path of the future should be unalterable that this late stage. It is…confusing."

"I never wanted anyone else to suffer for me," Minako insisted. She felt she had to say it, had to justify herself to someone, even if only to this mysterious woman who she'd never seen before in her life. "I didn't ask for this."

"Nevertheless," replied Margaret, "it is the hand that life has dealt you, and you must play it. I thank you for coming here today, and for answering my questions. I needed to know the truth. I needed to know if my fears were real, if my brother and sister really had taken the life of someone I loved."

"What do you want me to do?" asked Minako. The Velvet Room around her began to swim fuzzily, and Margaret's face began to fade from sight. Just before the woman disappeared, Minako heard her whisper, "It is not my decision. You, alone, have the power to decide how this story ends."

**Chapter Four**

**Author's Note: **Just a head's up, I won't be able to update tomorrow or Monday because I'll be booked up both days with rehearsals. I know I've been updating every day, and I promise I'll be back on Tuesday. Feel free to check back late Tuesday night for a new chapter! **Nightmare637**, thanks for catching that mistake! I fixed it. It's great that you were paying such close attention that you caught that, I really appreciate it. **AbyssOfMemories**, are you reading my mind? That's a cool trick, how do you do it? I'm gonna try to make sure to take the plot in at least one direction that will surprise you, though…

Oh, by the way, the whole thing about Elizabeth trying to rescue the protagonist, they hint at that in Persona 4, and then they really talk about it in Arena. Be warned, there will be some Elizabeth-related Arena storyline spoilers in future chapters.

**Chapter Four**

Minako woke up with a jolt. She was breathing hard, and it took her a few moments to relax and get her bearings. The Velvet Room was gone, and so was Margaret. Instead, Minako was back on Junpei's sofa, with the blanket tangled around her in such a way that made it seem she'd been thrashing around in her sleep.

So, she hadn't been wrong when she'd worried about the mysterious death of the Narukami boy. Somehow, he had contained some power or some ability that had made him a perfect replacement for Minako herself. There wasn't really a solution to the problem of the great seal. It would always have to be there. In her heart, Minako knew that. She had always known that. Without the seal, all that she had worked to save would be lost.

This boy, of course, probably hadn't known that. It was unlikely that Elizabeth and Theodore, bent on saving her as they apparently were, would have told him the truth, or given him a choice as to whether or not he was willing to become the seal. As Margaret had said, something didn't add up. How had they obtained that power? Shouldn't it be impossible to forge a new seal while one already existed?

Belatedly, Minako felt that she should be touched and flattered by Elizabeth and Theodore's devotion. She ought to be grateful to them, for coming so far and working so hard to save her life.

For some reason, though, she wasn't grateful. She wasn't relieved. Instead, she was angry. Why had they done this? It was almost as though they had made her a murderer. It was her fault that Narukami was dead. Maybe she hadn't intended it, but it was because of her that all of this had happened.

There were too many questions and too much confusion for Minako to handle alone. She thought of going upstairs to wake up Junpei, to tell him everything. Junpei had always been there for her, he'd always listened and been willing to meet all of their challenges head-on. He'd know what to do, or, if he didn't, they'd figure it out together.

Of course, she knew she couldn't do that. He'd be frightened if she told him, frightened that they were going to try to take her away again. She didn't want to scare him anymore. No, this mystery was one that she was going to have to face alone, and that made it even worse.

She was lost in that miserable, lonely speculation when someone began to bang loudly on the front door. Minako looked at the clock. It was four o'clock in the morning. Who on earth would be trying to get into the house at this hour? Looking around for something she could potentially use as a weapon, all she could find was a heavy coffee table book. Any blunt instrument in a storm, she thought, and picked it up in both hands.

"Hello?" Minako advanced on the door, and then discovered that she had to put the book down in order to open it. Frustrated, she spent some time trying to fumble the doorknob while still clutching her makeshift weapon, then eventually gave up, dropped the book, threw the door open, and prepared for the worst.

Akihiko stepped through the doorway, and his jaw fell open when he saw her. "So, it's true," he said, in a sort of soft, breathless voice. "You're back."

He looked good. Tall, strong, muscular, vibrant, just the way Minako remembered him. His presence in the room made her heart flutter as though no time had passed between them at all. "Aki?" she whispered. Slowly, he reached one arm out and passed it around her waist, drawing her close to him and reaching up a hand to brush back the mop of her brown hair that was thrown in front of her face, mussed from restless sleep.

"I…I thought I would never see you again," he murmured. "God, you're exactly the same…" Then he brought his face down close to hers, and brushed his lips against her cheek, then against the top of her head. Minako closed her eyes and let him pull her closer in.

Even as he embraced her, however, Minako felt uncomfortable. She thought she could feel someone's eyes on her, and she opened her own eyes to peer over Akihiko's shoulder. Only then did she see the other man standing in the doorway, watching the two of them with an unreadable expression on his tanned face. The other man was broad-shouldered, craggy, with wild eyes and a crop of dark, unkempt hair under his hat. She recognized that hat. It was the same one he had always worn, the one that she'd found in his bedroom the dafter after one of the worst tragedies of her life had occurred.

"Shinji," breathed Minako.

Shinjiro met her gaze, nodded once, then turned away and walked back out of the house.

"Shinji! Wait!" Minako freed herself from Akihiko, and called out after Shinjiro, but he just kept walking, back towards a car that was parked in front of the house. As Minako watched, she saw Shinjiro open the back of the car, and help Ken Amada out of the back seat.

"Yeah," said Akihiko, "I drove right over and picked them both up as soon as Junpei called me. You should have seen the look on Ken's face. It was like Christmas and his birthday at the same time." Akihiko laughed, then pulled Minako back into his arms to gaze into her eyes. "Not that I blame him. This is…the most wonderful thing that could happen right now. It's like…I don't know, some kind of miracle." Then he looked embarrassed for a moment, and cleared his throat, relaxing his grip and letting her move a little farther from him. "I mean…I'm really happy to see you again. Of course, we all are."

But Shinjiro, thought Minako, hadn't looked very happy. She forced herself to tear her eyes away from him as he pulled a suitcase out of the trunk, and began walking back towards the house.

"I'm happy to see you too, Aki," she insisted, snuggling against his chest. For some reason, that was all she seemed to be able to say. They stood there together in the doorway, holding each other, just as Junpei came running down the stairs in his pajamas.

"Whoa, what the hell? The sun's not even up yet! Dude, you two, get a room! Uh, and not mine, either!" Even while he reprimanded them, Junpei was grinning. "Hang on, let me put some clothes on."

**Meanwhile, at the Junes food court…**

Everyone was gathered at what they'd once called their "special headquarters," but the atmosphere was dark and depressing. Yosuke watched as Chie and Yukiko came out of Junes carrying trays of steak, which they plopped down on the tables before sinking back into their chairs.

Yosuke took a deep breath. "So," he said. "We're here to discuss our new mission."

"You don't have to put it like that," interrupted Chie. "It doesn't' sound right."

"It's too personal to be called a 'mission,'" agreed Yukiko, with a little sigh.

Yosuke ignored them. "We need to find out the truth about what happened to Yu." He managed to get through that sentence without letting his voice waver, but he saw Chie and Rise both wince and look away from him. "It's possible that all of this may have something to do with the return of the midnight channel, and I…I won't be able to sleep again until I know for sure why this happened."

"Yeah," agreed Kanji. "Somebody's gonna pay for this shit."

"Agreed," murmured Naoto.

Now, thought Yosuke, here came the hard part. "I am," he began, "temporarily appointing myself as our new leader, until…"

"Until we figure out why we don't have our old leader anymore," sniffed Chie.

There were no arguments. Everyone sat silently, watching Yosuke's face. After waiting for a minute to see if anyone would speak up, Yosuke cleared his throat. "Okay," he said. "So, our first job. What we're going to do is…"

**Chaper Five**

**Author's Note: **Surprise! I managed to catch an earlier train and made it home in time for a Monday update after all! Hooray!

So, first things first, **AbyssOfMemories,** you're on! Trust me, I have one up my sleep that you don't see coming, maybe even two! Mwahahaha…I hope. **Gamipedia**, thanks for reading! You really might want to try playing the games first, though, there are going to be a LOOOOOT of big spoilers in here. I mean, there already have been some pretty epic ones…like the fact that Minako was dead, and all.**Lionheart**, you are right about that tension, and **Jenni Saba**, if you thought THAT was bad, wait till you see THIS! **A Fool's Reflection**, I seriously appreciate the amount of effort and consideration you put into reading and reviewing my story. Thanks so much all of it!

All right, so, here's the deal. We've made it into the double digits – 10 reviews! What do you think, can we push 20? I dare you to post a review or comment on this story and see if we can get to 20 reviews.

As always, thanks for reading!

Oh, and PS: I PROMISE that we're about to see a lot more of the investigation team. I know several people have asked if they're gonna show up more. Yes, they are. Soon. Honest!

**Chapter Five**

It was starting to get dark outside as Yosuke finished up his shift at Junes. While distractedly stocking the produce shelves, he tried not to think about all of the times that Yu had come running at a moment's notice to help him out at the store. Unfortunately, every time Yosuke turned a corner in Junes, he found somewhere that he and Yu had hung out together. The constant reminders made him miserable.

"This sucks," he muttered to not one at all.

"Huh? What sucks?" Yosuke turned to find that Junpei Iori had come up behind him, his arms laden with soda cans, bags of potato chips and candy bars.

"Oh, Iori-san." Yosuke put on his best customer-service smile, and then shot a glance at the candy and chips. "Do you, um, want a cart for all that?"

"That…might be a good idea. Haha, sorry." Junpei waited sheepishly while Yosuke went and dutifully found him a shopping cart. Together, they loaded the cart full of Junpei's snacks. "Thanks, man."

"No worries." Yosuke shrugged. "That's what I do. What's all this stuff for, anyway? Did you just get dumped, or something?"

Junpei looked shocked. "Whoa, hey, what kind of a question is that to ask a guy? For your information, I'm having a party at my place. A friend of mine just, uh, moved here from out of town, so we're celebrating!"

"Oh, cool." Yosuke tried not to look too depressed, but he knew it wasn't working, and he didn't really care. "Must be nice." He remembered the celebrations he and his friends had all spent together, like the one they'd thrown when Nanako-chan got out of the hospital, and the one they'd had when Yu had first arrived back in Inaba for the beginning of what would end up being his last winter break.

"Jeez," said Junpei, "You look terrible. You work too hard. Hey, when does your shift end?"

Yosuke looked at his watch. "In about ten minutes."

"Cool." Junpei grinned. "Then why don't you come back with me and meet some of my friends? You look like you could use a good time. And trust me, man, some of these girls, they are pretty cute. You won't regret it, that's all I'm saying."

Yosuke thought about saying no. He knew that now, while he was still frankly grieving, was hardly the right time to go over and party with girls at a friend's house. He didn't feel much like having what Junpei called "a good time." The fact was, though, that he couldn't think of anything else useful to do. Teddie and Rise were on the other side, watching for any signs of suspicious activity. Yosuke, without Teddie's nose or Rise's skills, wasn't much use in that department. Chie and Yukiko were having dinner at the Amagi Inn, with Yukiko's parents, and they wouldn't be done for hours. Kanji was probably off hitting something to make himself feel better, and nobody ever knew where Naoto was unless she wanted them to. All that was left for Yosuke to do was to go home, lie around in bed and be miserable and sorry for himself. With that on the agenda, going to a party to try to take his mind off things didn't sound like such a terrible idea.

"Yeah," he said, "okay, sure. Thanks, Iori-san."

"Dude," said Junpei, pushing his car towards the line of cash registers, "you can call me Junpei."

**Meanwhile, at Junpei's house**

Minako wasn't sure whether or not she was having a good time. All of her friends had shown up over the course of the day, and Junpei's house was now erupting into exactly the kind of chaos that resulted from a hoard of people trying to throw a party in a single-family living room. Yukari and Fuuka were in the kitchen, trying to make the best of the leftover snack foods that Junpei had lying around in his cabinets. Mitsuru was on her cell phone, calling in sick to her weekly courses, Shinjiro was…well, Minako hadn't seen him since he'd driven up with Akihiko and Ken. He seemed to be avoiding her.

Akihiko on the other hand, was sitting with Minako on the couch, his hand resting on top of hers as Ken excitedly related stories about his first semester as a middle schooler. He was trying to be manly and nonchalant about it, Minako knew, but Ken was clearly delighted with his new school and his new friends, and he was having trouble not letting that shine through as he described them to anyone who would listen. It made Minako smile, but when she glanced over at Akihiko, she thought he looked a little bit uncomfortable.

"Is everything okay?" she asked him, squeezing his hand.

"Of course." He nodded absently at her, and then, releasing her hand, stood up. "I'm gonna go see what's taking the girls so long. I mean, how hard is it to make some ramen? " Not waiting for her to respond, he took off towards the kitchen. Minako frowned and followed him with her eyes until she saw him talking to a harassed looking Fuuka. Yukari left the two of them and walked over to the sofa.

"Wow," she yawned, "I'm exhausted. You must be too, Mina-chan. After all, it's been one crazy couple of days, right?"

"Yeah…" Yukari's yawn was contagious. Minako tried to be ladylike about it. "I am a little tired…"

"As am I," agreed Mitsuru. "I don't like the idea of trying to drive home with so little energy. I wouldn't want to be the cause of an accident."

"Yeah, no kidding." Yukari was frowning. "But we can't stay here. I mean…there's not enough room. Even if we all curled up on the floor, it wouldn't work." She didn't sound like she liked the idea.

"Never fear, Junpei's here!" Minako turned to see that Junpei was coming in through the front door. He had another boy with him, a shaggy-haired boy with headphones draped around his neck, who didn't look too much older than Minako herself.

"I'm back," said Junpei, "and I've got a great idea. Why don't we all go and party over at the Amagi Inn? They're having a rough season, so they'll probably have some vacant rooms we can use."

"They're expensive," said the shaggy haired boy. "Still, I bet they could use the business. Times are hard, you know?"

Something about the shaggy-haired boy seemed familiar to Minako, and she got up off the couch to have a closer look. Junpei, seeing her, cocked a thumb over at the other boy, and announced, "This is Yosuke Hanamura. Yosuke, meet Minako Arisato. Oh, and this here is Yukari, and Mitsuru-san, and that guy over there is Akihiko-san, and that's Ken…"

Junpei continued introducing people, but Minako had stopped listening. She was sure she'd seen this boy somewhere before, and that she'd seen him very recently. Then, suddenly, with a sickening jolt, she remembered. Yosuke had been one of the people she'd seen on that news program, standing around outside Yu Narukami's hospital room. He was one of that Narukami boy's friends.

A fresh wave of guilt swept over Minako, and as her stomach turned, she realized that she needed to be somewhere, anywhere else. Mumbling, "I need some fresh air," she brushed past her surprised friends, headed out the front door and then began to run. She wasn't running anywhere in particular, and it didn't take her long to have to stop and catch her breath. When she looked up, she found she'd met some sort of bricked-up dead end where the neighborhood seemed to stop.

"It's not fair," she muttered to herself, sinking down against the brick wall and drawing her knees up against her chest. "I didn't mean for it to happen. I didn't want anybody to get hurt. Why did he have to come here? Can't I just spend a few minutes enjoying the fact that I'm alive?"

With no one around to see her, Minako sat back, buried her face in her hands, and let herself cry. In all the best stories, she thought, the person who risked her life to save the world was rewarded with a fairytale ending. Minako, instead, had died, but then she'd come back, and shed' really almost thought that maybe this was her chance to get her fairytale ending. Instead, three years had passed for everyone but her, and the man she loved was acting strangely after such a long absence. Her friends all seemed to have moved on with their lives, and she would never have a chance to move on with hers, because apparently she'd accidentally killed someone to get it back in the first place.

"Wow. I am the most selfish person I have ever met," she muttered. "And I don't care."

"We're all selfish sometimes," came a voice from the darkness in front of her. "It's just what people are like. I figured you knew that."

Minako had the presence of mind not to scream, but she did jump to her feet and try to step backwards into the wall as a figure in a long coat approached her, holding out a wrinkled pack of tissues. "Here," said the figure. "Your eyes are all puffy."

"Shinji?" Even in the dark, there was no mistaking that voice. Shinjiro honestly didn't' look as though he'd changed at all since she'd seen him that last time at Gekkoukan High, when he'd climbed up to the roof and found her lying there, dying. He would never be a healthy man after all the special medications he'd taken to help control his persona. Even after all these years, he still looked slightly haggard, like a man who shouldn't be running around out in the cold. Still, he was alive, and not only had he lived through the bullet wound he'd sustained at Gekkoukan, he'd lived for years after that. Minako was thrilled to see him. "Shinji I'm so glad you're okay." She thwarted a sniffle, and accepted the tissues he was waving at her.

"I could say the same for you," grunted Shinjiro, but something about his tone didn't sound so delighted. Minako stepped forward to see him better. "What's all this about , anyway? I saw you take off. You shouldn't just run off like that, when it's dark. You could have been hit by a car, or something worse."

Minako couldn't help but laugh. "Shinji, I stopped the end of the world," she said. "I defeated more monsters than I can count on my fingers and toes. I'm not a helpless little girl."

"Yeah," agreed Shinjiro with a shrug, "but you're pretty small, and I could still overpower you easily if I wanted to. "

Minako started to respond, but before the words had gotten out of her mouth, Shinjiro's arms were around her, tightly, and he had her pinned hard against him. She could feel his heart beating through his shirt, and her own heart started beating faster to match it. His skin, when his hand briefly brushed hers, was hot to the touch.

"I'm just saying," he said, in a quiet, husky voice, "you shouldn't be out alone at night."

"Point taken," whispered Minako.

She waited for Shinjiro to release her, but for a moment he didn't. They stood together for several long seconds, until Minako finally looked up and met his eyes. As soon as she did, he let her go so quickly that she stumbled backwards and he had to reach out and steady her with one arm.

"Damnit," he muttered, "nothing's changed. After three years I still can't get you out of my head."

Minako didn't know what to say. "Look, Shinji, I never-!" she began, but he waved a hand to cut her off.

"Don't," he said, in a harsh voice, not looking at her. "Look, I get it. Nobody expected me to wake up. Wasn't I the one who told you to look out for Aki? Well, you did. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Um, does he know?" asked Minako.

"What? Not unless you told him about us. I sure didn't. What was I gonna say? 'Hey, your girlfriend, I had her before you did?' It was better not to let him know. After all, you were dead. What did it matter?"

Minako , frankly, hadn't wanted to tell Akihiko either. After she and Shinjiro had spent a couple of wonderful weeks together during his brief time with SEES, he'd been gunned down by Strega, and the doctors had insisted that he was never going to wake up. Nobody had known about her and Shinjiro, and so she decided that it was best not to let them know, to keep it to herself so that no one would want to talk to her about it, or to remind her of it. It would be easier, that way, to move on. And she had moved on. She'd moved on, in fact, to Shinjiro's best friend.

"Jeez, you don't have to keep clutching the wall like that," Shinjiro was saying. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I would never hurt you, okay? I'm not some kind of monster."

"I wasn't scared," Minako insisted. "You just startled me, that's all."

"I just wanted to see you." Shinjiro started to turn away. "I wanted to know if it was true, what Junpei said. I had…I had to see you. You understand, right?"

"Shinji." Minako bit her lip. "I-!"

"Don't." He cut her off with a word, and she stood there, watching him dumbly, as he shook his head. "Don't say anything. There was something I wanted to say…something I should have said before. Every time I should have said it, something got in the way, and I guess now it doesn't matter anymore."

"What was it?" asked Minako, although she thought, maybe even hoped that she already knew.

"Forget it. We should go back." Shinjiro started back towards the house.

**Chapter Six**

**Author's Note: **Hey, **Jenni Saba**, thanks for your review! Yeah, you'll definitely see more of Shinjiro soon, although I wouldn't' say he's going to be a sweetheart when we meet him again. Oh, and **boy1324**, you're gonna get your fight scenes in a few chapters when they head into the TV world, but this fic is purposefully gonna move slowly, so don't be disappointed if it takes me a few pages to get there! Thanks so much for reading and reviewing.

This chapter is a little lighter than the previous few. Junpei and Yukari tend to have that effect on things. Don't worry, in the next chapter we will return to our regularly scheduled Minako and Yosuke-angst fest, and we'll begin meeting up with the rest of the Investigation Team.

**Chapter Six**

Yosuke was surprised when the girl named Minako suddenly went racing out of the room. He saw Yukari and Junpei exchange a knowing look.

"She okay? Uh, did I do something wrong?" Yosuke watched as a tall figure in a dark hat and coat peeled itself away from the wall, and followed Minako out of the house. "She looked pretty upset."

"Nah," it's not you." Junpei shook his head.

"She's just having some personal problems right now," agreed Yukari. "Minako just came back here yesterday, after three years abroad."

"Yeah, in…uh, in Africa," put in Junpei.

Yukari glared at him. "Don't be stupid, Junpei," she said, a little too sweetly. "She's been abroad in America, hasn't she?"

"Yeah, right, America." Junpei shrugged. "They both start with A, right? It's an easy mistake. Anyway, so there's this guy, right?" He gave the man who'd he'd first introduced as Akihiko a significant look. "And they were dating back when she lived here, but since she went away, there have been some other women. Now she's back, and…well, you know how it can be. Time goes by, people change."

"That was…actually kind of deep, Junpei," Yukari said, sounding just a little impressed. "But still, you shouldn't be gossiping about this stuff! Yosuke-kun doesn't need to know about all this."

Junpei ignored her. "The worst part, though," he continued, "is that Minako doesn't know about what happened between Akihiko and Mitsuru."

Mitsuru, Yosuke remembered, was the very attractive, slender woman who had been on her cell phone for most of the evening. He'd thought pretty seriously about trying to talk to her, but she was older than him, and in the end his heart wasn't really in it.

"Of course she doesn't know." Yukari was annoyed. "And why does it matter? That was over a year ago! They barely even talk to each other anymore!"

Junpei raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, okay, but have you seen the way they've been looking at each other all night? No wonder Minako's in a bad mood. Someone should probably go after her, wouldn't want to leave her out there by herself, bleeding from a broken heart."

Junpei started to head for the door, but Yosuke shook his head. "One of your friends already followed her. A tall guy. Kinda scary looking, wearing a beanie."

"Oh, Shinjiro-san?" Junpei relaxed. "That's cool. She'll be fine, then. He looks scary…and, okay, he is sorta scary…but he's a good guy. I don't think he's gotten to talk to her too much yet, either. Probably wants his chance."

Yukari looked like she wanted to change the subject. "Um, so what were you saying, Junpei, about an inn?"

"Oh, yeah!" Junpei grinned. "So, Yosuke here is good friends with the hottie whose family runs the Amagi Inn, and he says he might be able to get us discounts on rooms for the night!"

"Whoa, whoa!" Yosuke shook his head vigorously, alarm bells ringing in his brain. "I didn't say anything like that! You just asked me if I thought there would be rooms free! I'm not even gonna ask about any discount, there's no way she'd be okay with that. Besides, it's not even Yukiko's inn, she just helps out there when her mom's swamped with other stuff."

"Well, can't blame a guy for trying." Junpei didn't' seem bothered. "I still think it's a great idea. Where better to have a real celebration than at an award winning inn with famous hot springs?"

Yosuke thought about the times that he, Yu, and the rest of the team had spent hanging out in the hot springs at the inn. It had been a great place for a party. Just because he'd never be able to enjoy it again didn't mean that nobody else could. "Hang on," he said, "I'll call Yukiko and see what's available."

As he moved away from the other two to make his phone call, he heard Yukari say, in what was probably supposed to be a whisper, "Wasn't that guy friends with the kid who died a couple of days ago? Yu Narukami? I've seen his face all over the news."

"He was what? Whoa, his friend died? Oh yeah, I think you're right, I think it was him. I totally forgot about that!" Junpei sounded shocked.

"You idiot…how do you forget something like that?" Out of the corner of his eye, Yosuke saw Yukari glaring daggers at Junpei. "He's probably all distraught, and you dragged him out to a welcome-home party? Talk about rubbing it in his face…"

"Man," muttered Junpei, "now I feel like crap…"

Yosuke dialed the number of the Amagi Inn. After a few rings, he heard a click, and then Yukiko's voice came over the line. "Hello! This is the Amagi Inn, where you can be sure of a restful and relaxing stay here in beautiful, nostalgic Inaba. Yukiko Amagi speaking. How can I help you today?"

"Oh, hey Yukiko," said Yosuke. "It's me, Yosuke. Listen, do you know how many rooms you have available tonight? This guy I know wants to have a big party with some friends from out of town."

"Um, let me check." There was silence on Yukiko's end for a minute or so, and then she said, "Actually, we have four rooms open tonight. Will that be enough?"

"I don't know, I'll call you back." Yosuke hung up the phone, and returned to where Yukari and Junpei were now actively not looking at each other. When Yosuke met Yukari's eyes, she immediately put on her most cheerful, ingratiating smile. It was a pity smile. Yosuke tried not to hate it.

"Hey, thanks for calling for us!" she said, a little too brightly.

"So, what's the good news?" asked Junpei.

"There are four rooms," announced Yosuke. "You guys should be able to fit into four rooms without any problem, right?"

Junpei laughed. "Four? Man, we could probably make do with two!"

"Ew," said Yukari, "not comfortably."

"Do me a favor," began Junpei. "Call you friend back, and tell her that-!"

At that moment, Minako came back into the room, followed by Shinjiro. Several things happened all at the same time. First, Junpei, catching sight of her over Yukari's shoulder, waved her over with one hand, calling, "Hey, Mina-tan! We're making reservations for that inn I was telling you about. So, who do you want to room with?"

Even before Junpei had finished speaking the last sentence, Shinjiro and Akihiko were watching each other over Minako's head, and Akihiko started forward, his body tensed for action.

Minako, however, stepped quietly over to Junpei's side, and said, without any sign that she'd even noticed the tension, "Yukari, of course. Is that okay with you, Yukari?"

"Uh, sure!" Yukari blinked. "Yeah, of course! It'll be fun! So, that leaves Fuuka and Mitsuru for the other girls' room, and I guess maybe Akihiko-san and Shinjiro-san can…"

Akihiko and Shinjiro were now very pointedly not looking at each other. Under his breath, Akihiko muttered, "I'll stay with Junpei."

"Or, " said Yukari smoothly, "Akihiko-san can stay with Junpei, and then…Shinjiro-san can stay with Ken-kun?"

"Sure." Shinjiro shrugged. "Fine by me."

Yosuke looked around at the various people in the room, many of whom were now pretending not to have noticed that anything had happened. These people, he decided, were definitely weird.

"Oh, hey," Junpei was saying, oblivious to Yosuke's judgment, "this is gonna be great. Yosuke, why don't you call up some of your friends and bring them over too? It might get a little tight, but the more the merrier!

"Wait, wasn't the point of this for us to have more space?" asked Yukari, but Junpei wasn't listening.

Yosuke, unsure of exactly how to decline that offer politely, opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by Minako.

"Hey, Junpei?" she asked. "How exactly are we gonna pay for all of this?"

Junpei went off to discuss funding with Mitsuru and Akihiko, and the rest of the party begin drifting into corners to check on suitcases or to chat about room assignments. Before he knew it, Yosuke found himself almost alone in the room with an apologetic looking Minako.

"I'm sorry about running off like that earlier," she told him. "It's…been a really long day."

"Yeah," said Yosuke "Junpei told me about it. It's okay. I understand."

They stood for a few moments in silence, before Minako said hesitantely, "This is going to sound presumptuous, Yosuke-san, but I'm really sorry about your friend."

Yosuke was taken aback. It wasn't really surprising that Minako knew about it. After all, Yu's death had been all over the news for days, and his picture, along with Chie's, Yukiko's, and particularly Rise's, had been shown on television, in newspapers, and in magazines, usually captioned with something like "Narukami's friends grieve for his untimely loss." Still, nobody else that this party had said anything about it, if he didn't' count the whispered words that Yukari and Junpei had exchanged.

"Thanks," he said lamely. "It's pretty awful." He knew that he sounded stupid, that of course it was awful, but he didn't know what else teo say. Minako just nodded.

"Listen," she said, after an awkward moment of silence, "I'm gonna ask you something, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, its okay, you don't have to say anything. I'm not trying to be weird, or creepy, but…"

"But what?" Yosuke stared at her.

"But," she finished, "um, does the word 'persona' mean anything to you?"

**Chapter Seven**

**Author's Note: **So, obviously I have decided to take this in a direction where the storyline no longer matches up with the one in Persona 4 Arena. Yes, I am going to provide an explanation for that later in the story, so that the storylines can match up again, and I do have it all plotted out and ready to go, so bear with me till we get there. In the meantime, blame Izanami, it's probably her fault.

**Jenni Saba**, thanks for the words of encouragement! The plot is about to get a lot thicker…jeez, poor Minako just can't seem to catch a break, can she? **Boy1234**, such flattery! Honestly, I could use a new job, so if atlus ever did want to call…aheh. Wishful thinking never hurt anyone, right?

Thanks to both of you for reading!

**Chapter Seven**

It had taken a long time for Minako to decide to ask that question.

As she walked back to the house behind a silent, brooding Shinjiro, there had been things she wanted to tell him. She wanted to make sure he knew that, after Shinjiro had been shot, she had spent three afternoons a week standing next to his hospital bed, talking to him, and waiting for him to wake up. She wanted to assure him that she'd never intended to be with Akihiko, but that Akihiko had been there for her. The thing between her aned Akihiko had just happened, and she knew Shinjiro would understand just how much she had needed it. Most of all, she wanted to tell Shinjiro the way he had made her feel when he'd grabbed her just now, the way she'd suddenly flashed back to cheap dinners out on Tatsumi Port Island, and to evenings spent watching the sun rise together in Shinjiro's dorm room. The skin on her waist was still tingling where he'd touched her, and she wanted him to do it again. This was troubling and confusing, because even as she was feeling all this, Minako was wondering what Akihiko was doing at the house, and whether or not he'd be thinking about her, or wondering why she'd run off like that.

Frustrated by her own complicated feelings, she sighed. Shinjiro glanced over his shoulder at her.

"What?" he asked.

"Oh." Minako shook her head. "No, it's nothing. I mean, it's not nothing, I just...I don't know how to say it."

Shinjiro shrugged, and kept walking.

"It's not that I don't want to talk to you," she insisted. "I do, but I have a lot to think about right now. I'm confused."

"Yeah? Well, I'm not going anywhere," muttered Shinjiro. "Sort out what you have to, then come and find me. I can wait."

They didn't speak another word to each other all the way back to the house, but somehow, Minako felt as though a heavy weight had just floated off of her shoulders. There were things that she wanted, things that she wanted to experience, and to feel. She wanted to know what a normal life was like, and she wanted to have time to spend thinking about and figuring out what Junpei would have called her "guy problems." Other girls would have had the time, but she couldn't focus. There was something she had to do first. Shinjiro was waiting. Her friends were waiting, and even she was waiting for the chance to really try to find the happy ending that she'd been denied the first time around. It was time for her to face up to the truth, particularly the truth about Yu Narukami's death, which had been preying on her mind since the moment she'd woken up. Her life, Igor had warned her, might be "limited." There wasn't a lot of time to waste.

The obvious place, then, to start looking for information about Narukami's death was Yosuke Hanamura. She didn't particularly want to talk to him. No amount of newfound resolve would make her feel any less guilty about what had happened, and she had a hard time even looking Yosuke in the eye. Still, he would have the answers that she needed, and one thing in particular that might shed light on the incident was what kind of a persona user Narukami had been. Of course, she knew, he had to have been a persona user. Only someone with the power and strength provided by a persona would have been able to take her place as the seal. If she knew a little bit about his persona, and about how he had used it, she might be able to figure out exactly why he'd been chosen for the seal in the first place.

When she'd found herself alone with Yosuke at the party, the opportunity had been obvious, so she took it. "Does the word 'persona' mean anything to you?"

The dumfounded expression that passed across Yosuke's face was enough to give him away. He definitely knew what she was talking about.

"Uh, I have no idea what you're talking about," he said.

"I don't believe you," she insisted. "You're not confused, just freaked out. You don't have a great poker face, do you?"

Yosuke looked trapped. "Who the heck are you?" he asked. "And how do you know about 'persona' anyway?"

"Look." Minako gestured towards the doorway. "I'm gonna tell you everything, but…let's go outside and talk about it, okay? There's some stuff that I don't think all of my friends need to hear right now."

Without waiting to see if he'd follow her, Minako started walking towards the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him hesitate, and then begin to follow behind. They both stepped outside and had a seat together on the curb.

Of course, she reflected guiltily, she'd lied to him just then. Minako had absolutely no intention of telling Yosuke everything. Nobody in their right mind would. This guy was probably a persona user too, and if he was, he could be dangerous. She didn't doubt that he'd get angry if he found out the real reason that his best friend had died, and she did not want a vengeful, dangerous persona-user out for her blood.

Instead, she turned to him, rested her hands on her knees, and said, "it's kind of a long story."

Yosuke blinked. "What? Seriously? Is that all I get? No way, you said you were gonna explain."

"Hold on, I am. I'm just saying, don't get impatient, this is going to take a while." Minako sighed. "So, what did they tell you about me? Junpei and Yukari, I mean. Did they tell you where I'd been for the past three years?"

"Um. They said you were in Africa. Or America." Yosuke looked confused.

"Okay, well, they lied," said Minako. "Probably because they didn't think you'd believe the truth. The truth is that I've been on a mission for three years, using my powers and my persona to fend off evil."

That sounded so lame and stupid coming out of her mouth that for a moment Minako was sure she'd blown it. To her surprise, Yosuke just nodded, still giving her his undivided attention. "And," she continued, trying to look and sound confident enough not to give away the lie, "I came back when Yu Narukami died, because someone who cared about him asked me to use my powers to help figure out what happened to him." Oh dear, she thought, this was only getting worse as she went along.

"So," whispered Yosuke, more to himself than to Minako, "I'm not crazy…I knew Yu's death had something to do with the other world."

"The…other world?" Minako was puzzled. Did the other world mean Tartarus? "Um, yeah, you're right. And obviously there are some questions that I want to ask you, about your friend, and about-!"

"Who sent you?" interrupted Yosuke. "You said someone sent you to figure out what happened to him. Who was it?"

"That's…kind of tough to explain." Minako frowned. "She lives in the persona world."

"You mean, the shadow world?" asked Yosuke.

"No. I don't think there are any shadows there." Minako was pretty sure that shadows weren't even allowed inside the Velvet Room. "At least, not that I've seen."

"There's a third world?" Yosuke seemed to be having trouble understanding.

"What?" asked Minako.

The two of them sat for a moment, staring at each other, while Minako tried to figure out what her next step should be. As it turned out, she didn't have to decide. With a determined look on his face, Yosuke stood up.

"Let's got to Junes," he said. "I need you to prove that you aren't making this up."

"How could I be making it up?" asked Minako. "You already know that personas and shadows are real. It would be a really strange coincidence if I just happened to make up something you already knew really existed."

"Forget it, you know what I mean." Yosuke headed for a car that was parked on the end of the curb. "Come on."

They took Yosuke's car the down the road to where Junes had shut off all of its lights for the night. Pulling out his key, Yosuke held a finger to his lips as he opened the door to let Minako into the electronics department. They walked down the aisles together until Yosuke stopped in front of a giant TV monitor.

"Okay," he said. "If you're really a persona user, then prove it to me. Go in there."

Minako looked around. "Where?"

"Into the TV." Yosuke tapped on the side of it. "Go on, show me."

While Yosuke stared at her, arms crossed doubtfully over his chest, Minako blinked at the TV. "So what you're asking," she said slowly, "is for me to go inside this television set. Right?"

"Right," Yosuke looked expectant. "Obviously."

"Obviously? There's nothing obvious about it!" Minako was starting to get really worried. Was this Yosuke guy actually crazy? Had she got this all wrong? "How the heck am I supposed to go inside a TV? Is it a fake, or a model? Is there a trap door in there or something?"

Yosuke sighed. "I knew it, I knew it couldn't be true. Where'd you come from, and why'd you tell me all that stuff? How do you know about Yu's persona? "

"Look, I told you already," Minako began, but Yosuke was shaking his head and gritting his teeth.

"I don't want to hear it," he muttered. "I don't get what's going on here, but it doesn't make sense and I'm way too tired to try to piece it together right now. I don't know what your game is, but if you really can use a persona, and you really are here to help us figure out what happened to Yu, then I need something more than just your word."

They drove back to Junpei's house in silence, and Yosuke left her on the front step before taking his car and going home. Minako felt stupid and angry. She'd tried to help him, she'd tried to do the right thing. If only she'd had her evoker with her, she could have shown him. She'd have to see if she could find one, or ask if any of the other still had theirs lying around. Once he saw her use her persona, Yosuke would know that she really was the only one who could help him find out the truth.

**That same evening, at Yosuke's house…**

As soon as he got home, Yosuke called up the Amagi Inn again. This time, he had to ask two or three people before he finally got Yukiko on the phone.

"Yosuke-kun, it's really late," she said, sounding embarrassed. "People are going to start getting the wrong idea about us."

"Forget about that," he told her, "there's something I need you to do for me. You know those guys I told you about? The ones who are coming to stay tonight at the inn? Yeah, well, I want you to keep an eye on them. Something really strange happened tonight, and I think it might have something to do with Yu's death. "

"What? Are you serious?" Yukiko was shocked.

"Yeah, definitely. And you might want to sit down for this." Carefully, Yosuke recounted everything that Minako had said to him that night.

**Chapter Eight**

**Author's Note: **Haha, well, **AbyssOfMemories**, to be fair, if Yosuke had said something like "hey, guess what, there's a world inside the TV that only persona users can get into, and it's created from human minds and hearts, so let's go check it out," Minako might have believed him. Instead, he just said "go inside that TV." If only he'd explained himself better, everything might have worked out. Except for course, it wouldn't have, because…well, you'll see why soon enough. Anyway, 2 to 1 it is! AHA! Even the minor victories matter.

A question for you all: It's 11:10 at night, my entire body is screaming out for sleep. I have to be up for work at 5:00 AM in the morning, and yet for some reason, I'm up writing fanfic. Is it possible to get addicted to fanfiction writing, do you think? Like, are there any documented cases of this? Just curious.

Anyway, without further ado, please be warned. This chapter is pretty safe, but the next couple of chapters will involve some suggestively sexual stuff. Nothing explicit, mind, but you'll definitely find it if you look for it. After that we'll go ahead and do some fight scenes.

Sound like fun? It will be, I promise.

**Chapter Eight**

At midnight, Yosuke, Yukiko, Chie, Kanji, Rise, and Naoto were all hunkered down in Yukiko's bedroom, having an emergency meeting.

"It feels kind of strange," whispered Yukiko, "staking out the Amagi Inn."

"Yeah, with Yukiko's parents in the next room," agreed Chie, "it feels less like a stakeout, and more like a slumber party. Hey, do you think we can get snacks?"

"Shut up about the snacks!" Yosuke was serious. "This isn't a joke. There's something really suspicious about that girl, we have to stay focused."

"Jeez, I was just trying to lighten the mood," insisted Chie. "I can't help it. It's so lonely, thinking about how…"

"Please, don't say it." Rise sighed.

"…how Yu would have been here with us," finished Chie. "I mean, he used to love this investigation stuff. He was always the first one to have a great plan. I miss him."

No one said anything for a moment. Each person was lost in his or her own gloomy thoughts or memories, until Kanji finally broke the silence.

"Um, hey, senpai? What exactly is the plan, anyway? We just gonna sit around here all night and hope that they confess to something real loud, so we can hear them?"

Yosuke shook his head. "Of course not. Listen, here's what we're going to do. There are four rooms, with two people in each room. It's a welcome home party, so they're probably gonna be moving back and forth and hanging out, right? I want one person stationed outside each room, and one of us at each of the hot springs. That way, we'll know everything that's going on, and we can report back tomorrow morning with our findings."

"Ew," muttered Rise, "we're going to spy on them in the hot springs? Isn't that basically sexual harassment?"

"Yes, that does seem a little extreme," admitted Naoto. "Standing and listening outside the bedrooms is definitely disturbing enough without resorting to watching them in the bath."

"It's not spying!" Yosuke was getting frustrated. "It's…it's reconnaissance."

"Um, isn't that the same thing?" interjected Chie.

Yosuke ignored her, determined to finish his thought. "We're going to stick to the plan, exactly the way I said. Kanji, you and Yukiko will hide out next to the guys' rooms."

"What? Me?" Yukiko was horrified. "But…I'm not a guy."

"It doesn't matter," said Yosuke, "you're an employee…sort of. If anyone sees you, it'll just look like you're delivering tea, or something. You can figure it out."

"Delivering tea? After midnight?" Yukiko squeaked.

"Or whatever else you can think of." Yosuke pushed on through his speech. "Chie, Rise, you'll be outside the girls' rooms. Naoto, you'll be there when it's the girls' turn to use the springs, and I'll be there when it's the guys' turn. Don't you dare make any stupid jokes about that, either, okay? Look, this could be our big chance to find out the truth about what happened to Yu. I'm not gonna miss it, and I'm not gonna let any of you screw this up because you didn't take it seriously."

He glared around meaningfully at each of them, and waited for everyone to nod their understanding.

"But…Yosuke, what if they don't know anything? What if this is all for nothing?" Chie sounded uncertain.

Yosuke didn't meet her eyes. "Then at least we did something," he told her. "We have to do something. I can't sit around doing nothing and letting life just go on around me anymore. I feel useless, and…" He trailed off, then took a deep breath and began again. "Anyway, we owe it to Yu. He would have done it for us."

"Then," asked Naoto, quietly, "are we all sure that we understand the plan?"

**Meanwhile**, **in Minako and Yukari's room…**

"Wow." Yukari was standing the center of the bedroom, staring around at the artwork on the walls. "This place is perfect! I do not even want to ask what Mitsuru-san had to pay for it. Can you believe it? What a way to welcome you home! I hate to say it, but Junpei really had a great idea this time."

"Yeah, he did." Minako tried to sound enthusiastic, but her heart wasn't in it. She was worried about the things she'd said to Yosuke before they'd left for the inn. If he hadn't believed her at all, then nothing bad could happen, right? After all, if he didn't even think she was telling the truth, why would he spend any time worrying about it? In retrospect, spilling everything to him like that had probably been a terrible idea. At the time, though, it had seemed like the brave way out. Now, she just felt foolish.

"Hey, are you listening?" Yukari sat down next to Minako on the floor. "You're really quiet. Did something happen back at the house? This is your party! If you're not having a good time, then what's the point?"

"I'm sorry," Minako mumbled. "I'm not trying to bring you down."

Yukari snorted. "Bring me down? What are you talking about? Mina-chan, you're back! That's what matters. I can't remember the last time I was this happy." Reaching out , she passed one arm around Minako's shoulders, and gave her a friendly little squeeze. "Everything's gonna go back to normal, now. Okay, maybe not 'normal,' but at least the way it always should have been. You'll see, it's going to be wonderful."

Minako was absolutely sure that things were not going to go back to 'normal'. She didn't remember ever having had a 'normal,' and so she wasn't even sure what it would feel like. Either way, this was definitely not it.

"Oh, I get it." Yukari must have seen the look on her face, because she nodded, and bit her lip. "It's Akihiko-san, right? Listen, Minako, boys are idiots. He's probably just shocked because you're back. Just give him some time; I know he really is happy to see you. It just wasn't something he ever expected. Sometimes too much happiness can be a little scary, right? When my fiancé proposed to me, and I said yes, he didn't talk to me for three days because he couldn't figure out what to do next, now that he'd popped the question! I had to call him on it! Isn't that ridiculous?"

Dutifully, Minako laughed.

"There, that's better." Yukari smiled. "You should get some sleep. Everyone feels better after a good night's sleep, and you can't have been that comfortable last night, sleeping on Junpei's couch!"

"Actually," said Minako, "I'm gonna go and see if I can get a glass of water. I'll be right back."

"Okay," agreed Yukari. "Just don't get lost."

Minako stood up and walked out into the hallway. She was wearing a pair of red pajamas that Yukari had lent her, which was a welcome change from that old school uniform that had probably begun to smell by now. She'd have to ask Junpei about doing some laundry when she got back to the house.

Thinking of Junpei reminded her that he was rooming with Akihiko, and she suddenly realized that, for the first time, she might have the chance to talk to Akihiko alone, away from everyone else. They hadn't really had the opportunity to spend any private time together since he'd arrived at the house that morning, and it wasn't as though he'd never seen her out of her day clothes before.

The more she thought about, the more she liked the idea, and in only a few moments she had started off down the hallway towards the two rooms occupied by the boys. It was dark enough that she wasn't too worried about being caught in the hallway by anyone else, and with any luck, Junpei would already be asleep when she came in. Even if he wasn't, Junpei knew how things were between her and Akihiko. He'd probably be gentleman enough to step out for a few minutes, long enough at least for them to have some time to talk.

It was just as Minako turned the corner near Akihiko's door that she heard the voice. It wasn't his voice, and it wasn't Junpei's In fact, it was definitely a woman's voice, and, as she got closer, Minako recognized it as Mitsuru's. The voice was low and urgent, and it was hard for Minako to hear what Mitsuru was saying. What she did hear, however, was Akihiko's reply.

"I can't," he said. "I doesn't feel right, and I hate that. I know it's been a long time. Maybe too long. Some things about the way I feel are never going to change, but people do. People do change, and we're different now. That's all I have to say about it."

Minako reached the door to Akihiko's room just in time to see Mitsuru standing with him the doorway, and to hear her say "We're not so different." Then, before Minako even had the chance to open her mouth to speak, she watched Mitsuru lean in and kiss Akihiko full on the lips.

Minako didn't run. She didn't burst into tears, or scream, or fling herself on the floor, or do any of the things that romantic heroines are supposed to do when they catch their boyfriends in compromising positions. Instead her heart in her mouth, she waited for Akihiko to pull away, to shove Mitsuru or to reprimand her.

Part of her knew he wouldn't. Part of her had known ever since she'd embraced her that morning that someone just wasn't the same. Instead of pushing Mitsuru away, Akihiko leaned in to the kiss for a moment, then broke it off and muttered, unconvincingly, "don't do that."

Minako had seen enough. Quietly, so as not to let anyone know she had been there, she began to move back through the hallway towards her own room. As she went, she almost thought that she heard a voice from the shadows murmur "Ouch…that sucks."

**Chapter Nine**

**Author's Note:**

**Lionheart, **I'm so glad you're enjoying the story! I'll try to keep it fun for you! **Jenni Saba**, well, I suppose that makes sense, since Yosuke's shadow is just another part of him. Let's hope he snaps out of it, though…**Maudlin Blase**, wonder no more, cause here's the answer to one of the things you were wondering about in this story…

So, I got home tonight to discover that two exciting things had happened. First of all, "What Cannot Be Broken" has reached 20 reviews! All of you who have been reading are wonderful! HUZZAH! Do I hear 30? I think we can do it…Also, I was informed that a play that I wrote has been picked up by a theater company in DC, and that it will be a part of their season this year. What amazing news! In honor of these two exciting milestones, here is a chapter that I had way too much fun writing. WARNING: This chapter contains some low-key sexuality, and, as always when Shinjiro is involved, swearing.

**Chapter Nine**

Yosuke found himself having a hard time staying awake. It was already 1:00 in the morning, and he was crouched behind the door to the hot springs changing room, listening to Junpei and Ken having one of the most useless conversations he'd ever heard.

While Junpei was relaxing comfortably in the water, Ken seemed nervous . "Um, Junpei-san," he said, "don't you think it's a little late? I don't think we're supposed to be in here anymore."

"Eh, don't worry about it." Junpei shrugged. "Nobody's gonna bother us. The management is probably all asleep already, anyway.

"Oh, um, okay." Ken went silent again.

Yosuke was frustrated. So far, his carefully planned reconnaissance hadn't gotten him anywhere at all, and now he was exhausted and stuck watching two guys paddle around in the pool. The only suspicious thing that had come out of either of them all night was a surreptitious fart that Junpei had let off, which had been so noxious that Yosuke wasn't sure he ever wanted to go into the Amagi hot springs again.

Maybe, he thought, he had been wrong after all, and maybe these guys had nothing to do with Yu's death. They certainly didn't seem very threatening. If that was the case, though, then what had that Minako girl been talking about?

Just as Yosuke was getting ready to give up and let his eyes close for a few minutes, Ken finally said something that got his full attention.

"Hey, Junpei? Do you ever use your persona anymore?"

Junpei looked surprised. "Huh? Nah, course not. I mean, what would I use it for? All that stuff's over now. " He sighed. "It's kind of a waste, though, right? Why'd you ask?"

"No reason." Ken kicked one foot out of the water, making an awkward little splash as he brought it back down. "I was just thinking that maybe a persona might be good for helping get rid of bullies at school. I mean, if there were bullies. Just to scare them a little." Ken was staring at his knees, not meeting Junpei's eyes.

"Wait, is somebody picking on you at school? Junpei sloshed over to where Ken was sitting. "Seriously? Have you told Akihiko-san about it?"

"Oh, I told him.," muttered Ken. "He threatened to beat everyone up for me."

"Yeah," said Junpei, nodding sagely, "yeah, that won't work. A man's gotta take care of some things for himself, right?"

"Right," agreed Ken.

"So, about the persona…" Junpei continued thoughtfully. "I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, I'm no expert on morals, or anything, but I don't' think they're supposed to be used that way. You know what you could do, though? Try this."

Junpei kept talking, but Yosuke couldn't hear the rest of what he said. So, he thought, they really were persona users after all. Then…what exactly did that mean?

**Meanwhile, outside the boys' rooms…**

Minako wasn't sure where to go. Talking with Akihiko was now out of the question, and she didn't much like the idea of going back to the room to face Yukari either, after everything that had happed. Yukari would try to be cheerful about it, and for all of her good intentions that would probably only make the situation worse. Minako didn't want to be cheerful, and she didn't want to hear about how it would all work out in the end. She wanted to be miserable and to feel sorry for herself for a few minutes. After all, she thought, everyone should be entitled to that now and again, and this seemed like a very appropriate time.

"They've all left me behind," she said out loud, in a voice that came out sounding hoarse and quiet in the stillness of the corridor. Time had stopped for her, but for everyone else it had kept going, and she had become a fond memory, something to look back on and to smile. She was a piece of nostalgia now, not a real person at all. She didn't have a place with these people anymore.

Akihiko had told her that he'd loved her. She'd believed him at the time, and part of her still did, but…wasn't love supposed to be something that lasted forever? What had happened to all the stories of men and women who had died still loving the same high school sweetheart that they'd confessed to sixty years before? Wasn't real love timeless? Akihiko had said that it was real. Minako had felt that it was real.

"But," she told herself, "if it was real love, then how could he forget about it?"

If only, she wished, for the hundredth time that day, she had managed to come back sooner. If only she had never died at all. Then Akihiko would never have had time to forget her. Nothing would have had time to change between them.

Of course, if she hadn't died, then the world would have ended. No one would have been able to remember anything. The horrible, unworthy thought crossed her mind that at least, in that case, he never would have been able to love anybody else. Disgusted with herself, Minako pushed that thought as far away from her conscious as possible.

It occurred to her that this must be how Shinjiro had felt when he'd woken up from his coma. It hadn't been three years, but even in only a few months the world had gone on without him. She, of course, had gone on without him. Why had she done that? Was she scared? Was she lonely? Or had she forgotten him, too, after all?

Minako knew that couldn't be right. She hadn't forgotten him. She remembered him still, remembered and relished even the very few moments that they had been able to spend together. Even now, Shinjiro hadn't forgotten her. Just that morning, he'd said that he'd wait for her. To him, she was still real. Right now, Minako wanted, more than anything, to be with someone who would make her feel real.

Without really thinking about what she was doing, she crept a few feet down the hall to where Shinjiro and Ken's room was. For some reason, the door to the room was open, and Ken was nowhere to be seen. Shinjiro, still awake, was lying on his back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, with a blank expression on his face.

Minako cleared her throat.

Shinjiro looked up. When he saw her, his eyes widened, and he stared for a moment before he managed to say "What the hell are you doing? Don't you have any sense? You shouldn't be creeping up to guy's bedrooms in the middle of the night." Reddening slightly, he asked, "and what are you wearing?"

Minako looked down. It was true that the pajama top she was wearing was a little bit too tight across her chest, showing off perhaps more of her bust line than she would have liked. Still, she wasn't about to tell Yukari that her chest was the wrong size.

"Oh, I get it." Shinjiro's voice had turned cold. "You're looking for Aki's room, right? You're in the wrong place. He's down the hall to the left."

"I know that," said Minako.

"Oh yeah?" Shinjiro didn't seem to want to look directly at her. "Then what do you want?"

It was a difficult question. Minako didn't exactly know why she'd come. She'd been thinking about him, and then it had just seemed like the best place to go. Maybe she just wanted someone to make her feel like she was still alive. Shinjiro had made her feel that way when he'd put his arms around her in the street outside Junpei's house. Maybe she wanted him to make her feel that way again.

"I just want to see you," she said, finally.

Swinging his legs around to the end of the bed, and faced her. "Why?"

"Um," asked Minako, "may I come in?"

"No," Shinjiro gave her a hard look, a look she recognized from the days in the dorm before she'd known him very well. It was his inscrutable look. "You should get out of here."

She didn't listen. Instead, she took a step into the room, and heard Shinjiro's sharp intake of breath as she did so.

"I thought I made it pretty obvious how I feel about you," he told her. "It's not right for you to be here, with me, alone like this."

"It's not the first time," Minako reminded him.

"Don't you think I know that?" Suddenly, Shinjiro was angry. "Don't you think I think about it every time I see you? Hell, I think about it every time I'm alone at night. "

He looked pained for a moment, and Minako felt a stab of guilt inside. There was something other than guilt as well, something more subtle, but fiercer. She wanted to reach out to him, to get rid of the pain and the person who had caused it. She wanted to get rid of herself.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"Tch. Save it," he snarled. "You pitying me only makes it worse."

Shinjiro turned away from her, but Minako wasn't ready to back down. Walking over to the bed, she reached a hand out to touch his. Instantly, he recoiled, and sat glaring at her.

"What do you want?" he asked again.

"I don't know," she admitted.

Shinjiro sighed. "Listen," he muttered. "You've gotta understand. I'm not like Aki, and I'm not like you. I'm not confused. I've made up my mind. I know what I want, and it's you. It's…god, it's been you for years. You did something to me, it's too late to go back now. It's never gonna be anybody else. Not for me. For years I had nothing, and I knew I wasn't ever gonna have anything. Now you're back, and I can't have you. It's enough to drive a guy insane."

Even here, thought Minako, even with Shinjiro, all I've done is make things worse. All I've done is cause trouble for everyone. For Akihiko, for Junpei, for Shinjiro…

"Maybe it would be better if I'd never come back," she said, more to herself than to him.

"Wha-? How did you get that from what I said?" Shinjiro was staring. "That's not true. Don't make that face, I…aw, shit."

Suddenly, Shinjiro had his hands wrapped around Minako's waist, and he was kissing her roughly and urgently, his mouth moving hard against hers, parting her lips. He pulled her up on to the bed, and pressed his fingers into her lower back, forcing her tightly against him. "Don't say stuff like that," he muttered. "I don't want to hear you say that shit."

Minako closed her eyes as he dragged her pajama top up over her head, and then pressed his mouth to hers again, then to her collarbone and shoulder. He was holding her so close that it was getting hard to breathe, but somehow she didn't feel like trying to move away.

His hand was fumbling with the drawstring on her shorts when it suddenly stopped and dropped to his side. With one deep outgoing breath, Shinjiro pressed her back on to the bed, and leaned his burning hot cheek against her forehead. Everything was still for a moment. "Forget it," he breathed. "Damnit, we're not doing this."

Minako's heart was still beating alarmingly fast. Trying hard not to sound too disappointed, she asked, "You don't want to?"

Shinjiro's jaw dropped open. "A-are you stupid? Of course I want to, I just…I don't want to with Aki's girl. I want…ugh. You still don't get it."

With an effort, he forced his body to relax, and released his grip on Minako. Taking off his shirt, he threw it to her. "Here, put this on. It'll keep you warmer than that thing you were wearing before."

Embarrassed, Minako turned away from him while she shrugged on the shirt. Her face was hot, and she re-tied her drawstring while she was climbing back out of the bed. Shinjiro's hand on her arm stopped her just as she was about to make a bolt for the door.

"I didn't say you had to leave," he said. "C'mere. Just…stay here with me for a bit. I don't' care if you're thinking about him. Just…stay."

**Chapter Ten**

**Author's Note: **Unfortunately, there seems to be something wrong with my computer. Random words and even full sentences keep deleting themselves, or appearing somewhere else in the text. Sometimes, a letter will simply not appear no matter how many times I push the keys, implying a problem with the keyboard as well. I am not tech savvy, and I do not know why this is happening. Please bear with me, and I apologize for any uncaught typos in this document.

Thanks for your patience,

Ari Moriarty

**Chapter Ten**

Yukiko and Chi ran up to Yosuke as he was coming back from the hot springs. Chie looked excited, and Yukiko's face was bright red.

"Hey, Yosuke!" Chie called. "While Yukiko was watching that scary guy's room, he-!"

"Come on, keep it down!" Yosuke clapped a hand over Chie's mouth, and she spluttered indignantly into his hand. "Get it through your head, we're trying to be discreet about this!" Removing his hand carefully from angry Chie's face, he asked "Yukiko, what happened with Shinjiro-san?"

"Well…" Yukiko was clearly mortified. "I waited outside his room, just the way you told me. Around one o'clock, Minako-chan came in. They had an argument, and then, they…" trailing off, she bit her lip. "I can't say it. I was so embarrassed, listening in like that…I have to go wash my ears to clean out what I heard."

"Wait, they…seriously?" Now it was Yosuke's turn to be shocked. "What did she…no, nevermind. But, wait, I thought that Minako was with Akihiko-san."

"Ooh," interjected Chie helpfully, "but I saw Mitsuru-san walking towards Akihiko-san's room not twenty minutes before that!"

"What is wrong with these people?" Yosuke shook his head. "It's like a cheesy soap opera in here."

Chie nodded. "Yeah, something like this happened on 'All My Lovers' just the other night. Momoko found out that her sister, Reiko, was really seeing Ryu-kun behind her back, and then…" Noticing the puzzled look on Yukiko's face, she stopped. "What?"

"Um…that just doesn't seem like your kind of television show," Yukiko admitted.

Chie looked at her feet. "Uh, it's not, obviously," she muttered. "Kanji must have told me what happened, or something. That's right, it was Kanji."

"Hey, focus." Yosuke pushed all thoughts of soap operas and scandalous rendezvous out of his mind. "Listen to this. I think they really are all persona users. I heard the guys talking about it in the hot springs. "

"What? Did they say anything about Yu?" asked Yukiko.

"No, but, trust me." Yosuke was deadly serious. "If they know anything about what happened, I know how to get it out of them."

"We could probably just ask them," suggested Chie. "I mean, that girl Minako seemed pretty eager to spill everything, right? She'd probably open right up."

"No, that won't work." Yosuke couldn't explain why, but he felt instinctively like something was wrong with Minako. Her story had been weird enough, but he was used to weird stories. It was more the way she had told him the story than what she had actually said. Something had just felt off about the whole thing. "They're hiding something."

"If you say so," muttered Yukiko. She and Chie exchanged a look, but Yosuke ignored it.

"What we're gonna do," he went on, "is invite them into the TV world tomorrow. If they're all persona users, then they can get in without being attacked by their shadows. Once we're all inside, we'll have Teddie close the entrance, and they won't be able to get out. If they want us to let them leave, they'll have to tell us the truth."

Yukiko stared. "What? No, we can't do that!"

"Yeah," agreed Chie, "that's pretty much kidnapping."

Yosuke shrugged. "I know it is," he said. He didn't care. At least, he thought, it wasn't murder. If these people had anything to do with Yu's death, then…well, he could worry about that later.

"So," he asked, "are you in or not?"

**Meanwhile, in Shinjiro's room…**

Minako and Shinjiro were lying next to each other on the bed, in the midst of an uncomfortable silence. Minako had stopped trying to figure out what to say. There were so many conflicting feelings and thoughts fighting for dominance in her head that it seemed to make more sense just to keep quiet and listen to Shinjiro breathe. The sound relaxed her a little, and she couldn't figure out why. Maybe it was because his silence gave her space for her own thoughts.

After a while, however, Shinjiro's breathing turned into coughing, and he doubled over on himself in the bed, his body racked with dry, raspy sounding coughs.

"Ugh, sorry," he muttered, after he'd managed to get his breath back. "My immune system is shit. Musta caught something."

Minako wondered guiltily if he'd gotten sick from the cold when she'd run out of Junpei's house, and he'd cased after her.

"I thought you'd gotten better," she said.

"Yeah, well…the damage was done." Shinjiro shifted against the pillows. "Can't take that back now."

"I'll make you some tea," she said. The room had a kettle and a teapot already prepared, and Minako got up and went over to it. She could feel Shinjiro watching her heat the water and pour the tea. When she turned and handed him a steaming cup, he looked at the tea, and then at her with a strange, faraway expression on his face. As he accepted the cup, he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"Thanks," he muttered, and took a sip of the tea. Minako watched a shiver pass through him as he drank, but at least he seemed to have stopped coughing.

"Never thought I'd be the sickly kid," he said, with a half-smile starting on his face. "Heh. Didn't think I'd live long enough."

Minako, who remembered very well when the doctor's had told her that he would never wake up, winced. "I'm glad you did," she said.

Another long moment of silence passed between them before Shinjiro asked, abruptly, "Do you love him?"

"What?" Minako assumed he meant Akihiko. "Of course, I…" she began. Unbidden, an image of Akihiko kissing Mitsuru floated into her mind.

"Nevermind," Shinjiro grunted. "Forget it. Not a fair question." He reached over to the stand near the bed, and grabbed at a napkin that he'd used when the coughing had begun.

Minako hadn't noticed it before, but there was something that looked like a gun lying next to that napkin. "Shinji," she said, "is that an evoker?"

"Huh? Yeah, obviously. What else would it be?' He wiped his mouth with the napkin. "I don't own a gun. Persona's better anyway."

Minako picked it up and held it in front her thoughtfully. "Why do you have it?"

Shiniro sighed. "Never know when I might need it. The world's full of stuff uglier and meaner than shadows. Can't be too careful." After a moment, Minako thought she heard him say, under his breath, "Couldn't protect you the first time. I can't let that happen again."

She wasn't sure exactly why she did it. It wasn't something she thought consciously about doing. As Minako held the evoker up to her temple, she heard Shinjiro cry out in surprise. Just after she pulled the trigger, he reached over her and grabbed it out of her hand, tossing it down on the bed.

"What are you doing?" he asked angrily. "Not here!"

Minako, however, wasn't listening. "It didn't work," she whispered. Completely oblivious to Shinjiro's protests, she picked up the evoker and, again, shot herself in the head. Again, nothing happened. Frantically, she began to search around in her mind, looking for any trace of Orpheus, Tam Lin, Sandalphon, or any of the other personas that she knew she kept contained within her psyche. There was nothing there. She felt nothing at all, except for a sickeningly large pool of emptiness where her personas had once left their echo.

"They're gone," she said. "All gone. I can't find them." How hadn't she noticed before? It had been days she'd felt any sign of her personas. Caught up with everything that was going on in the real world, she hadn't even thought to check or to look for them.

"Try it again," said Shinjiro. He had an arm around her, holding her up. Minako realized that, in her panic, she had lost control and had almost toppled over off of the bed.

Again, she held the evoker to her head, and again she fired. There was nothing wrong with the evoker itself. It shot, and she felt the impact, but nothing else. There was nothing within her to respond to the gesture, and she let the evoker fall out of her hand. This time, it clattered to the floor, and neither of them bothered to pick it up.

"Why?" she whispered. "Why?"

Not too long after that, Minako went back to the room she was sharing with Yukari. Yukari, of course, was already asleep, and Minako collapsed on to the bed without even bothering to change back into her other pajama top.

She knew that she would visit the Velvet Room tonight in her dreams. She had to. There were questions that she had to ask.

**That night, in the Velvet Room…**

"Welcome to the Velvet Room," intoned Igor. He was again seated in the center of the room, with Margaret in a chair beside him. For the briefest of imperceptible moments, Minako and Margaret locked eyes, and Margaret nodded.

"My personas," demanded Minako. "Where are they?"

"You seem," Igor said, inscrutable as always, "to have lost your way."

"Why," insisted Minako, "have they been taken from me? Why has everything been taken from me?" She was shouting now, but she didn't care. The one thing that she'd known she could hold on to, the one thing that made her truly valuable in this new time, had been lost. She was angry, and she was frightened.

"Please, sit down," Igor invited her. He waved a hand, and a blue velvet chair materialized behind her. Without taking her eyes off of him, she sank into it.

"Your mind," continued Igor, "is full of turmoil. You have forgotten who you are, and your resolve is weakening, as are your bonds with those you love. You do not even know where your loyalties most strongly lie. The chaos within your heart leaves you no room for the storage of personas. They cannot exist where chaos reigns. You already know this."

"Please," Minako begged him. "Give them back to me."

"That is beyond my power to do." There was something almost disapproving of the way Igor was looking at her now. Was he allowed to look at her that way? Wasn't she his "valued guest?"

"There is hope," said Margaret. Both Igor and Minako turned to stare at her. "There is always hope, Minako Arisato. It is up to you to find the strength to regain your personas. It will be within yourself. Do not try to look for it anywhere else, or you will lose yourself there and be unable to find yourself again."

"Tell me how," begged Minako, but she knew eve as she spoke that the plea was hopeless. Igor and Margaret had already begun to fade away, and she was about to wake up in the real world.

Margaret's words echoed in the blurry dreamscape between sleep and waking. "Within yourself…"

Then, with a jolt, Minako woke up.

**Chapter Eleven**

**Author's Note: **Oh thank goodness, the computer is at least sort of working. Honestly, what I'd do if I lost my word processor, I don't know…I have so much grad school homework…which, of course, is not what I'm doing right now.

By the way, as you can probably tell by now, there will not be a lot of MinakoxAkihiko in this story. If you want to read some good MinakoxAkihiko, check out **Maudlin Blase ! **I'd particularly recommend her short story "Not Another Goodbye." Be warned, it's a tear-jerker.

Now, don't get too angry at the investigation team during this chapter. Remember, everybody has more than one side to their personality, and grief can bring out the worst in people. Or, in some cases, the best.

**Chapter Eleven**

Minako almost got stuck riding back to Junpei's house packed into a car with Akihiko, Shinjiro, and Ken. At the last minute, she begged Junpei to let her take Mitsuru's place in his car, and Junpei, being the hero that he was, asked Mitsuru to make the switch. Mitsuru gave Minako a sharp look when Junpei asked, but agreed to it readily enough. Junpei, Yukari, and Minako ended up going back together.

"Wow, what a night." It was a particularly foggy day, and Junpei seemed to be having a hard time focusing on the road. "I don't think I slept more than an hour. Couldn't let Ken stay up later than me. After all, I'm the adult around here."

"That's a scary thought," yawned Yukari. "You, an adult…Ken's more mature than most of us, any day."

"Yeah," agreed Junpei, "that's probably true. Still, it'd help if he'd get a little taller. He still looks like a kid."

Yukari turned a suspicious look on Minako. "You," she teased, "were out awfully late last night. Honestly, I don't' remember you coming back in, I was already asleep."

"Oooh, Mina –tan!" Junpei was grinning all over his face. "Making up for lost time, huh? Well, can't say I blame you. Sheesh, I need a girlfriend."

Minako wondered what had happened to Chidori, that Strega girl whom Junpei had been head over heels for at Gekkoukan. She thought about asking, but this was definitely not the time. She'd ask later, maybe when she and Junpei were alone. Somehow, she got the feeling it might not be a happy story. Chidori, after all, hadn't been a very happy girl.

"But the question is," Yukari was saying, "what girlfriend out there could possibly need you?"

It felt good to be back with Yukari and Junpei, Minako reflected. It gave her a chance to take her mind, just for a short while, off of the nightmare of losing her personas. At least the two of them didn't seem to have changed very much. Sure, they were both older and a little bit wiser, even Junpei, but they were still throwing cheerful insults back and forth as though they were back in high school. Yukari seemed happier than she had been before, with the dark mystery of her father's death behind her, and a new life with a new husband stretched out in front of her. Junpei…well, honestly, Junpei was just Junpei. Maybe that was what Minako loved about him.

"Well, Minako? You're not even going to deny it?" Yukari was looking at her again, and Minako pulled herself out of her reflections long enough to remember that they were talking about her.

"It's not," she said truthfully, "what you think."

"Are you sure? Cause you'd be amazed what I can think," said Junpei.

Yukari almost gagged on a laugh. "Oh lord, I probably wouldn't."

Junpei's car turned the corner, and began to pull up in front of his house. There was already another car there, and Minako's heart began sinking again when she saw that it was Yosuke's. Yosuke himself was standing on the curb, leaning up against the car, and he wasn't the only one. There were four girls there, and another guy, as well, all of whom Minako remembered from the news program about Yu Narukami's death.

"Huh? What're they doing here?" asked Junpei. "Feeling guilty about not taking me up on my offer last night?"

"I think we should go," began Minako, but Junpei was already stopping the car and opening the door.

"Hey," he called to Yosuke, "what's up? We missed you at the party. It was totally awesome. You weren't wrong about the inn being a great place for a celebration."

"He doesn't look very happy," murmured Yukari, glancing at the grimace on Yosuke's face. "Come on." Together, she and Minako got out of the car and went to join Junpei on the curb.

"So?" asked Junpei, looking around at the Yu's assembled friends. "Can I do something for you? There's a lot of people over right now, but we can probably fit in a few more, if you-!"  
"Nah, that's okay." Yosuke was looking at Minako, even as he answered Junpei's question. "Actually, can you come with us to Junes? We want to show you something."

Two of the girls with Yosuke were whispering to each other and looking worried. Minako tried to hear what they were saying, but it was no good.

"Um, sure! Is there a sale going on, or something? Hey, do you guys fix TV remotes,? Because I think Akihiko-san broke mine when he was trying to get Yuka-tan to change over to the sports channel."

By this time, Akihiko's car had pulled up behind them, and now he, Shinjiro, Mitsuru, and Ken were all standing out on the curb as well.

"You should all come," said Yosuke, gesturing in their direction. "Seriously, you're not going to want to miss this. It's pretty spectacular."

Getting back into their cars, the whole group drove over to Junes. Yosuke led them through the aisles of the electronics department until they came again, to the same giant TV that he had shown Minako the night before. A cold feeling went down her spine, and she very briefly considered the possibility of making a run for it. That, of course, was out of the question. She'd created this mess through what she'd seen at the time as an act of heroism, and now she'd have to stick it out, to make sure that everyone else was okay. What had Yosuke said, about going inside the television? What had he meant by all that, anyway?

"It's a nice TV," Junpei was saying, tapping it on the side with his fingers. "A little expensive for me, though, aheh. I don't, uh, get a bonus this year because of all the extra sick days I took from Daidara-san. Still, maybe next year. Of course, it'll probably be obsolete already by then."

Minako noticed, only a second or two too late, that the muscular blond boy with the tattoos had come up behind Junpei, and had both arms out in front of him. "Hey!" she called out, but before she had the chance to say another word, the blond boy was pushing Junpei into the television monitor.

She expected to hear the impact of Junpei's face on the screen, and was already moving towards him to catch him if he fell backwards. Instead, Junpei fell face forward through the TV screen, and he disappeared from sight.

"What the-" began Akihiko angrily, but then he, too, was shoved into the screen by the blond boy. Two of the girls had Mitsuru by each arm, and were in the process of throwing her inside. Ken was kicking and shouting as Yosuke tossed him into the television, and Yukari was had already disappeared, apparently even before Minako had noticed what was happening. At a loss for what to do, she ran forward, and put her hands up to the screen. It didn't yield, but was firm and glassy before her.

"Where are they?" she screamed at Yosuke, as he friends began to step one by one through the screen and into the TV set. "What did you do to them? Bring them back! I'm the one you want, not them!"

"Don't worry, you're coming too," insisted Yosuke. Grabbing her wrist in a painful grip, he stepped into the television, and pulled her along behind him.

Everything went temporarily dark, and then the world began to spin. Minako was nauseous when she hit the ground, but managed to pull herself together enough to scramble to her feet and look around. Slowly, all of her friends were doing the same thing, brushing themselves off and staring wide-eyed at the unfamiliar surroundings. They seemed unharmed, if confused and angry.

They were all in some kind of a bright, open area, with TV recording equipment lying around here and there. Off to one side was a bridge that led…well, somewhere. From where she stood, Minako couldn't see what was on the other side.

The strangest piece of the entire scene, however, was the animal that was standing only a few feet from where she'd fallen. It was probably a bear. At least, it was something that was trying very hard to look like a bear. With blue fur and eyes the size of deluxe soup plates, it looked like a badly designed plushie that had come to life.

"Let go of me," Yukari was shrieking, flailing one arm at a pretty, dark-haired girl who had her by the wrist. The dark haired girl dropped Yukari readily enough, and Yukari instantly ran to Minako's side.  
"Are you okay?" she asked.

Minako nodded. "How about you?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," insisted Yukari. "What is going on? Did we really just get shoved inside a television? Or did it just look like a TV?"

"It's definitely a TV," said Yosuke.

Minako's friends were looking at each other, confused, checking to make sure that no one was hurt. Everyone was on their feet now, and all eyes were turned on Yosuke, who was standing in the center of his co-conspirators.

"What the hell, man?" asked Junpei. "Is this some kind of joke? You're creeping me out."

"It's not a joke." Yosuke crossed his arms over his chest and put on a menacing expression. "We know that you're persona users, so don't pretend that you don't know what's going on."

He glanced over his shoulder at the friends he'd brought with him, but only the blond haired boy seemed to be paying attention. The girls, on the other hand, were all either staring at their feet, or looking nervously into the faces of Minako's friends.

"Uh," continued Yosuke, apparently somewhat unsettled by his friends' reactions, "so, we know that you're persona users. This can't possibly be a coincidence. You just showed up here, conveniently, around the same time that Yu died? We don't buy it. You know something about Yu's death, and we're not gonna let you out of here until you tell us what it is."

"You're under a misapprehension," said Mitsuru, using her best, most rational tones of voice. "We don't know anyone who has died recently by the name of Yu, unless you are referring to that boy who has been all over the television recently. A very sad affair. I was sorry to hear about his death."

"Shut up!" Yosuke snarled at her. "Don't give me that stuff about being sorry about it. I don't want sorry, I want answers! I know you know something! You must…you must know something."

For a moment, Yosuke's glare wavered, and Minako recognized something in his face, something that she knew she'd last seen while staring into a mirror. He was lost and desperate, snatching at straws while he tried to do something, anything that would stop the pain.

"Yosuke-kun," she began, "I tried to tell you. They don't know anything about it, it's all…"

"It's not my fault," came a sniveling voice from somewhere behind Minako. The strange thing was, it sounded like her voice. No, that was wrong. It hadn't sounded like her voice, it had been her voice, even though she knew that she hadn't said those words.

"It's not my fault, I didn't mean to do anything to him! I'm not responsible for this!" Minako turned slowly around, and found herself staring into the face of…herself. The Minako standing behind her was cowering close to the ground, dressed in the same Gekkoukan uniform that Minako had been forced to put back on before getting into Junpei's car. She looked just like Minako, down to the cut of her jaw and the birthmark on her left wrist. The only thing that was obviously different was in the other Minako's eyes. They were yellow, slanted, menacing eyes, full of rage and emptiness at the same time. They were horrible eyes.

As Minako stared at her, she kept speaking. "Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be. After all, I saved the world, I made the ultimate sacrifice! Isn't it my turn to have a happy ending? Isn't it my turn to ride off into the sunset with my prince charming, so we can all live happily ever after? That's what's supposed to happen to the heroine at the end of the story. When does that happen for me? What if we just let this go? I didn't mean to hurt him. I just want to close my eyes and make it all go away. There's nothing that I can do anyway."

Yosuke's eyes were fixed on the other Minako, and he had clenched his shaking hands into a pair of fists. The dark-haired girl moved forward and put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off without even looking at her.

"Fate's a funny thing, you know," the other Minako was saying. "Sometimes it works in ways you'd never expect. This doesn't feel much like a happy ending, does it? Doesn't anyone love me anymore? I don't want to be a murderer. I don't want to make everyone sad. I don't want to make everyone angry. I think I…maybe I don't want to be anymore at all. Would that make you happy?"

"Who are you?" asked Minako, already knowing the answer to the question before the words even left her lips.

The yellow-eyed Minako gave her a pleading look. "I'm you," she whispered.

**Chapter Twelve**

**Author's Note: Flowerchild77 **and **dotorNAMU**, thanks for the kind words! Yes, we will be seeing more of Aigis. In fact, Aigis has a very important role to play in the later part of this story, but we won't see her for a long time yet. When you finally do see her, you'll understand why it took so long. **AbyssOfMemories**, hooray! I'm glad I'm keeping you guessing. Er, that is a good thing, right? **Jenni Saba**, yeah, the pace is picking up. It's crunch time for Minako!

Okay guys, we're coming to an important turning point in the story. I guess you could say that everything you've read up until now has been a sort of extended prologue, or a "part one." Now we're getting to the good stuff.

**So, here's where you come in. **So far, other than Minako and Yosuke, these characters have appeared in this story: Junpei, Akihiko, Shinjiro, Mitsuru, Yukari, Ken, Yukiko, Chie, Kanji, Rise, and Naoto. Please tell me: which of these characters would you like to see more of? There's a big reason why I'm asking this question, and you'll see what that is in a couple of chapters.

Thanks for all the help!

**Chapter Twelve**

"And you," continued the yellow-eyed Minako, "are me. Can't you tell? Please don't deny it. Don't pretend you don't know how I feel. I need you to understand…to believe in me. Please!"

She didn't want to believe it. Her brain was screaming at her to deny it, to refuse it, rejecting every word that came out of the yellow-eyed Minako's mouth. At the same time, however, she remembered what she had said to Junpei on day of her revival. She'd said those same words, had felt those same feelings. "I need you to believe in me," she mouthed.

The yellow-eyed Minako smiled a sheepish little smile. "You do understand,' she said. "Of course you do."

Dimly, Minako was aware that the tattooed boy was approaching the other Minako, gripping a folding chair in both hands. He was just raising it, prepared, apparently, to slam the other Minako over the head, when Yosuke's voice rang out harsh and cold in the hush that had fallen over the group.

"Leave her alone," he said. "Let her talk. I want to hear this."

The tattooed boy backed off, and yellow-eyed Minako seemed not even to have noticed the danger. Instead, her eyes remained locked on Minako's. "Elizabeth and Theodore did it," she said. "It was their idea to start looking for me, to try and find a way to free me. Without them, I'd still be locked into the seal. They're the reason Narukami died. They sacrificed him to bring me back; I don't know how. I didn't know what they were planning, I didn't even know Narukami existed. I'm just an innocent bystander, it's Elizabeth and Theodore's fault, not mine."

"Why," asked Yosuke, "did he die? Why did Yu have to die?"

Yellow-eyed Minako shrugged. "Because someone had to be the sacrifice. It was supposed to be me, but…once I was free, it had to be someone else. I don't know why Yu makes a good sacrifice. I don't know anything. Why are you asking me all these questions? I can't tell you any more! Stop asking me!"

Without warning, yellow-eyed Minako's wheedling tone turned sharp and hostile, and she spun to glare at Yosuke, a dark, menacing aura beginning to surround her whole body. Minako could feel the powerful, negative energy coming off of her doppleganger's form. Not thinking about why she did it, but just knowing that she had to distract her other self somehow, Minako called out desperately to the yellow-eyed girl, "But you're wrong! It is your fault! Narukami never would have died if it weren't for you."

"No…that's not true." For the moment, the ploy seemed to have worked. The other Minako abandoned Yosuke, and turned back to meet Minako's eyes. "You know that can't be true. I don't deserve all this guilt, do I? For something I had no control over? What could I have done?"

"What the hell is this?" Shinjiro stepped forward, his hand on the evoker that he stuffed into his pocket. He stared back and forth in between other Minako and Yosuke, apparently unable to decide which of the two was the more immediate enemy. Other Minako rested her eyes scornfully on him.

"And you," she said. "You're the biggest hypocrite of all, acting all miserable and pathetic because I didn't choose you, and I moved on without you. You say I don't understand, but you're the one who doesn't get it! You left me. You're the one who left me!"

Shinjiro froze. "Wha-?" he began, but then couldn't seem to find the words to finish the thought. Other Minako advanced on him, an accusing note in her shrill voice.

"I was there, I saw the whole thing," she went on. "You didn't try to dodge the gunshot. You didn't even want to survive! Right before he shot you, you looked at me and you said 'Minako, don't cry!'" Do you know why you said that? Because you knew, you knew that you were leaving, and that you were never coming back. How can you accuse me of going on without you, when you're the one who decided to slip away from me? Where were you when I wanted you?"

Apparently losing interest in Shinjiro, other Minako turned her attention to Akihiko. Akihiko, now scowling darkly at Shinjiro, didn't seem to realize at first that he was the person being addressed.

"You were my hero," other Minako told him. Her voice was softer now, less shrill, but somehow angrier and colder at the same time. "The one person that I knew that I knew would always be there for me. What happened to that? Where is the love that you promised me? You wouldn't wait for me. It's not my fault that I had to leave. I didn't want to go, I didn't even know that I was going! Why couldn't you understand that?"

Akihiko bit his lip and took a deep breath, gazing guiltily down at the ground. "It was never supposed to work out like this," he muttered.

"Stop it," whispered Minako. It was quiet, barely audible, but somehow the other Minako must have heard. She looked puzzled for a moment, and then a faint gleam of what looked like satisfaction flashed in her terrible eyes.

"Why? Isn't this what you've always wanted to say? I'm just trying to help them understand that you can't be held responsible for the things that they've done to you. Why does everyone seem to think that you're the one making all the mistakes, when they've been betraying and ignoring you since the beginning? You're lost. You're confused. There's nothing you can do about that on your own."

Minako shook her head. "You're wrong," she began.

"Oh? You mean you don't want to tell them?" asked the yellow-eyed Minako.

"No. I know these feelings are real. I know when I'm thinking and feeling stuff like this, but that doesn't matter. You're wrong about there being nothing I can do." Minako took a deep breath. She was conscious of the faces of her friends all around her, watching her, waiting to see what she'd do next. It was infuriating and invigorating at the same time.

"This can't be how we live our life," she said. "I know that it feels sometimes like there's no other choice, but we can't just wait around for everyone to do things for us, or for things to happen to us or to act on us. That's not really living. If we're going to be real, if we're going to be alive then we have to take control of that life."

Other Minako said nothing for a moment. The gleam in her eyes had died away, and Minako knew that the pleading expression on her other self's face was probably reflected just as strongly on her own.

"Don't be scared," said Minako. "I'll never leave you. I won't forget you, ever again. We'll turn this around and make it right together."

Slowly, the yellow-eyed Minako nodded, once. A surging, powerful calm came over Minako, and as her other self faded away, she saw a faint sparkling in the air around her. Something felt heavy in the pocket of her jacket, and when she reached inside, she found a glittering card that didn't look like it was made of any kind of paper or cardstock that Minako had ever seen. It was a tarot card, and on it, something was printed in the familiar lettering that she'd come to recognize as the sign of persona.

"Izanagi," she read out loud. "The fool."

"Ah." A serious looking, androgynously dressed girl who had come in with Yosuke approached Minako and examined the card in her hand. "The same persona that Yu once carried. This cannot, I feel, be a coincidence."

"Is it true?" Yosuke hadn't moved, but was staring at Minako, his eyes boring into her and sending a chill down the nape of her neck. "Are you the reason he's dead?"

Minako put the card back into her pocket, and went over to him. Everyone else in the area moved aside as she passed, until they'd created a sort of aisle down which she was facing Yosuke.

"This time," she promised him, "I am going to tell you everything."

Starting from the beginning, when she had arrived at Iwatodai station on her first day as a Gekkoukan student, Minako told Yosuke the story. He listened quietly and attentively, not interjecting or expressing any surprise at some of the stranger things she said, and she was grateful for that. He wasn't the only one listening, either. When she got to the part about the changing of the seal, about Elizabeth and Theodore's quest and about Margaret's plea, everyone in the room was giving her their full attention.

"That's what happened," she said when she'd finished. "I don't know anything else. I'm sorry."

Silence reigned around her. Some people were looking at each other, or staring at the ground, lost in thought. Yosuke was nodding quietly to himself, as if confirming some internal thoughts.

"Then," he finally muttered, iIt's not your fault. It's like you said, there wasn't anything you could have done. But…"

"But, you want him back," added Minako. "And you're going to fight to get him back."

Yosuke sighed. "Yeah." He said. "I don't care what it takes."

Junpei spoke up for the first time since the appearance of Minako's other self. "Hey," he interrupted, "wait, but…if he comes back, then, doesn't that mean that Minako will-?"

"I know," said Minako. "I'm going to help you bring him back. But there's something that I want you to promise me first."

"Anything," agreed Yosuke, without hesitation.

"I want," continued Minako, "for you to promise me that you'll never forget about him. No matter how long it takes, no matter what you have to do or how many things happen in the meantime, you need to promise that you'll never give up on him. He'll never be just a memory to you. To any of you." She addressed this last part to all of Yu's assembled friends, looking around and making each of them meet her eyes in turn. They all nodded their assent.

"I promise," said Yosuke. "He's my best friend. I…none of us could ever forget."

Yeah, thought Minako, that's what they all say. Out loud, she said, "okay. Then it's a deal. We work together to bring Yu Narukami back. No matter what it takes."

Even as she spoke, Minako could see Shinjiro out of the corner of her eye. There was a fierce expression on his face, defiant and dark, the same way she'd seen him look long ago when he'd forced himself in front of Ken , just in time to protect the boy from being murdered. With a pang, Minako turned her head away.

It was true, what she had told her other self. It was her job to take control of the world around her, in order to right the wrongs she was facing. Some things, however, even she couldn't change. Some sacrifices had to be made.

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Author's Note: **Thanks to everyone who took the time to read , to review, and to encourage! **DotoriNAMU, Lionheart**. **Maudlin Blase **and **one-regret-103** have made character suggestions for the next few chapters, and I'm eager to hear from the rest of you!

Recently, you guys asked about the mysterious absence of Aigis. Well, you won't see her in this story for many chapters yet, but I did just read a story by **AbyssOfMemories** called "Crack Pairings" that puts Aigis in a very interesting pairing with Yosuke! I really liked it! Go ahead and check it out while you wait for Aigis to make her appearance in this fic.

**Chapter Thirteen**

"Let's go," said Minako, her words echoing around in the hush that had fallen over the assembled group. Even the bizarre plush bear was watching her expectantly. "There's someone we need to see."

"Who?" asked Yosuke.

"An old friend of Yu Narukami's." Minako looked around, sure that, somewhere in this strange place, she'd find the entrance that she was looking for. "She's the one who first told me about Elizabeth and Theodore's plans. She might be the only one who can tell us where to start looking for them."

Even before she finished her sentence, Minako's eyes fell on the door. It was the same exact kind of door that she'd once used in Iwatodai, at the Paulownia mall, to get in and out of the Velvet Room. There had been one at the entrance to Tartarus, as well, and so she had known there must be one here. Anywhere that had shadows must also have a link to the Velvet Room, although even now she wasn't entirely sure why that was true.

This door was sitting right near when she'd fallen when Yosuke had first pushed her in to the TV. The strange blue plushie was standing right in front of it, although he didn't seem to notice it at all. Minako headed for it, and Yosuke was quick to follow behind.

"Yeah," said Yosuke, "that's a good idea. You said her name was Margaret, right?"

"Right," agreed Minako. "She's Elizabeth and Theodore's sister."

"And…Elizabeth and Theodore are people who live in this 'Velvet' place?" Yosuke sounded like he was doing his best to make sense of a lot of confusing information.

"Well, yes. I mean, I think they're people. They look like people. And they might or might not actually be living," said Minako. Seeing the blank look on Yosuke's face, she sighed. "It's confusing, I know. Yu would have known about them. They're responsible for looking after persona users. They work for someone named Igor, and-!"

"Yeah," interjected Junpei. "We've met him. He helped us out after you…" stopping, he swallowed, and then finished, more quietly, "after you died."

That made sense, thought Minako. After all, when she'd become the seal, there had been no one left, at the time, with her persona ability. Yu hadn't come along until years later, so of course, Igor would have turned to the other members of SEES. "So, then, can you see that door?" she asked, pointing at the shimmering door to the Velvet Room.

"Yeah," said Akihiko. "We can see it." He, Mitsuru, Yukari, Ken, Junpei, and Fuuka strode forward. "Are we going in there?"

Minako didn't answer. Instead, she looked around at the confused and questioning faces of Yosuke and his friends. They were staring at the spot where Minako was pointing, but their expressions indicated that they didn't see anything there. If they've never been to the Velvet Room before, she thought, then they won't be able to see the door. So, then, how was she going to get them all inside?

"Take my hand," she said to Yosuke, holding it out to him.

Yosuke blinked at it. "Um…"

Minako was annoyed. "I thought you said you'd save him 'whatever it takes.' Is a little uncomfortable physical contact really that big of a deal?"

"I don't know where you're taking me," Yosuke insisted. "You say there's a door. I don't see a door. What if this is all some kind of-?"

"You're going to have to trust me or this isn't going to work," interrupted Minako. "We're either a team, or we're a mess. Besides, you need my help. I don't think you're going to get Yu back without me."

"Do what she says," growled Shinjiro, from somewhere near the back of the group. "She knows what she's talking about."

It may have been the menacing tones of Shinjiro's voice that did the trick, or it may have been the confidence that Minako could feel shining out of her own eyes. The world felt like a different place, now that she had her persona and knew what path she needed to be on. Maybe there were fewer possibilities now, but at least she had a purpose, some real meaning to her being alive.

Whatever it was, it convinced Yosuke. He reached out and held on to her hand.

"Now, the rest of you, hold on to each other," Minako instructed. "Each of you who has been into the Velvet Room before, you need to be touching someone who is new to this. I think as long as we're all linked to each other, we'll be able to go in together. Okay?"

Slowly, somewhat reluctantly, each of Yosuke's friends took the hands of the members of SEES. Some of them were holding on as though they were gripping diapers or dead fish, wary of the unfamiliar contact.

When everyone had a hand to hold, Minako pressed her unoccupied hand to the Velvet Room door. It opened in front of her, and, pulling Yosuke along behind her, she stepped inside.

"Ah…" said Igor, looking up as they entered. "What a pleasant surprise."

No matter what he said, Igor didn't look surprised. He never did show a great deal of emotion, but even so, Minako had expected him to be a little bit thrown off at seeing so many unfamiliar people coming into the Velvet Room all at once. She glanced over at Margaret, who nodded once.

"Oh," said Minako. "You were expecting us."

"What is this place?" whispered the short-haired girl, who was still holding firmly onto Yukari's hand. Yukari was wincing slightly, apparently from the intensity of the short-haired girl's grip.

"You can drop hands now," said Minako, belatedly. She watched with some amusement as each of the boys immediately let go of their male partners' hands, and began brushing their palms off on the sides of their pant legs.

"This," intoned Igor, "is a place for those who seek to use their power to protect the future and the futures of the ones they hold dear. Margaret has told me everything that she knows about the disturbance in the patterns of the future. It seems that the former residents of this room have forgotten their place and have sought to take the flow of fate into their own hands. You have come, of course, to set things right again. I knew that you would."

You're a smug, self-impressed bastard, thought Minako. One day, I'll surprise you, and I won't do what you know that I'll do. Out loud, she said, "So you know where to find Elizabeth and Theodore?"

Igor didn't respond to that. Instead, he made a sweeping gesture with one hand, over towards the far left wall of the room. Minako and Yosuke both turned to look at the place he was indicating, and found themselves staring at a seemingly endless line of closed black doors, each with a large, ornate lock, and two glowing keyholes.

"By now," said Margaret, "my brother and sister will have felt that something has gone wrong. They will know that you are coming, and they will seek to hide themselves in the safest place they can find, the place that you are least likely to ever want to look."

"I have a bad feeling about this," muttered Junpei.

Minako tried to ignore him, but she couldn't help but agree. This was sounding worse and worse by the moment. "Where is that place?" she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

Margaret smiled a sympathetic smile. "Within the darker parts of your own inner minds," she told Minako. "Just as your personas rest alongside your core of strength and sense of self, Elizabeth and Theodore will choose to hide in places that you will never go, into the parts of your mind that you hide from the daylight, and that you avoid even thinking about."

"So, in our nightmares," said Yosuke. "I…had a feeling it would be something like that."

Ah, thought Minako, he's getting the hang of this.

Margaret nodded. "Yes, that is one way of putting it."

"So, these doors, then," said Yukari. "They lead to our nightmares? That's so creepy…"

"Each of these doors," confirmed Margaret, "leads to the darker parts of your minds. Not everyone, however, is haunted by the same thing. You will find that each door has two keyholes, and that only one key will fit each of the keyholes. It is up to you to discover behind which of these doors my brother and sister are hiding. It will not be easy."

"Let me guess." Yosuke looked tired. "There are going to be monsters."

"Shadows, yes," agreed Margaret. "For in order to find the answers that you seek, you must first exorcise the shadows in your own minds."

"This," muttered the androgynously dressed girl, "feels remarkably familiar."

The same blond, tattooed boy who had tried to throw a punch at Minako's other self stepped forward, holding something up so that they all could see. It looked like a big brass key, exactly the right size to fit into one of the locks on the row of doors.

"Found this in my pants pocket," he told them. "So, what are we waiting for? Let's check it out."

There was some shuffling among the people in the Velvet Room, and a fair amount of muttering and whispering. Minako thought she heard the short-haired girl say "Oh, no, Kanji? I don't think I even want to see what's inside his nightmares...not after we saw what his shadow looked like! Eeww…"

"Um." Ken, soft-spoken as he was, had trouble being heard over the rising murmur. "I've got one too." He, too, held up a great brass key. It seemed, at first glance, to be almost identical to the one that the boy named Kanji carried.

"Huh? But you're just a kid." The short-haired girl was looking down uncertainly at Ken, who seemed to be doing his best to stand up straight and look tall. "Are you really going to be okay in there?"

"Don't worry, I've got your back," said Kanji. "Think you can hold your own in a fight?"

"Yes," said Ken simply. Kanji nodded.

"That's enough for me. Come on, let's try some of these doors." With Ken trailing behind him, Kanji walked over to the row of doors, and started trying his key in each of the locks.

Neither of the keys worked in the first door, nor did they work in the second door. When Ken tried the third door, however, his key slipped easily in and turned in the lock. Kanji found that his key fit the second lock. Ken and Kanji exchanged a look, and Ken nodded.

"Let's go," he said. They both put a hand on the door, ready to swing it open and go inside.

"Wait!" Yosuke suddenly left Minako's side and joined the two boys. "I'm coming with you. We don't know what kind of shadows are in there. It could be dangerous."

Oh, it's definitely dangerous, thought Minako. She didn't know this Kanji kid nearly as well as Yosuke did, but even she could guess that any nightmares coming out of him would be a force to be reckoned with. After all, he was a big guy, with a nasty looking skull tattoo and rippling with muscles. What could he possibly be scared of? It would have to be big, ugly, and creepy. She shuddered involuntarily.

"Well?" Yosuke was watching her carefully. "What about you? Are you coming?"

"Of course I am." Minako could feel the weight of the fool card in her jacket pocket. It comforted her, made her feel powerful and safe. "Is everyone ready?"

**Chapter Fourteen**

**Author's Note: **It's my birthday! I am 26 years old today. Wow, compared to most of you, I am pretty old. In honor of my feeling old today, here's a chapter about toys.

**Chapter Fourteen**

Kanji took the initiative, and pulled open the door. Through the doorway, the four of them could see an uneven landscape of blindingly, garishly bright primary colors. It seemed to consist primarily of endlessly rolling hills, each held to the next with large, sloppy black stitches. All around, the sound of raucous, derisive laughter reverberated.

"Wow, Kanji," remarked Yosuke. "I mean, I knew you were weird, but…damn. You seriously have some issues, man."

They all watched as a huge, purple stripey elephant, which appeared to be knit from string, tumbled across the ground a few feet in front of the door. The elephant was wearing a wizard's hat.

"Shut up," Kanji grumbled.

"Although," continued Yosuke, "it could be worse. Honestly, I was expecting your nightmares to be full of naked chicks."

Minako raised an eyebrow. "How would that be worse, exactly? I thought all boys lived for dreams like that. You certainly seem like the type."

That got a blush out of Yosuke. "Yeah, well, sure," he managed, "but Kanji, he's…different." Yosuke put a significant emphasis on word "different" that Minako couldn't hope to understand. "He's terrified of women."

Kanji, by this time, had turned an unpleasant shade of angry, embarrassed purple. "I've told you a hundred times," he insisted, "I'm not afraid of girls anymore! I talk to Yukiko-senpai and Chie-senpai all the time!"

Yosuke wasn't ready to give up. "Oh yeah? And how about Naoto? Most of the time you won't even look at her."

Minako opened her mouth to intervene on Kanji's behalf, when, unexpectedly, Ken said "It makes sense."

"Huh? What does?" asked Yosuke.

"Being afraid of girls," Ken clarified. "Girls are strange." Having said this, he started forward through the door, leaving the rest of them staring after him.

"See? He gets it." Kanji gave Yosuke a vindicated look. "Girls are strange. They say things that they don't mean, and they always expect you to know what they're thinking. It…it makes me nervous. Ken-kun knows what I'm talking about."

"Dude, he's like, eleven." Yosuke shook his head in exasperation. "You're identifying with an eleven year old kid. Doesn't that seem kind of juvenile?"

Minako decided that she'd had about enough of this. She didn't get exactly what was going on between Yosuke and Kanji, but as far as she could see, Kanji hadn't done anything to deserve all of this harassment. "Actually," she interjected, "Ken is thirteen, and, Yosuke? The only person acting juvenile around here at the moment is you."

"Hey, what was that for?" Yosuke called, as Minako jogged ahead through the doorway to catch up with Ken, who had stopped to watch an oversized red teddy bear lounging in a clearing.

"Do you think they'll attack us?" he asked, as Minako approached.

She nodded. "Probably. According to Margaret, these are the shadows of Kanji-kun's nightmares, so they're probably hostile." Even as she said it, Minako was having trouble taking the giant plushies seriously. Why on earth, she wondered, was a big guy like Kanji afraid of something that looked so much like a children's toy? Idly, she wondered to herself if maybe Kanji had experienced some trauma in his childhood relating to a favorite toy that had gotten lost, or something like that. She'd heard once in a high school psychology class that things like that could happen.

"They're awful," said Ken.

Minako blinked. "What, really? I don't know, if they were a little smaller, they might be really sweet. I had some toys like these when I was a little girl."

Ken muttered something in such a low voice that Minako couldn't hear him. When she raised a questioning eyebrow, he repeated, in an only slightly louder voice, "I don't like toys."

That made Minako smile. "Yeah, well, I know you're a little old for them," she began, "but…" What stopped her was the dark, brooding look on Ken's face. She'd seen a similar look on Shinjiro's face when he was thinking about the past, and now she was sure that Ken and Shinjiro had been spending too much time together since she'd been away. They were starting to share mannerisms, and there were some of Shinjiro's, Minako thought, that Ken could do without.

Ken kept talking quietly, more to himself than to Minako, as though he were thinking out loud. "When I was eight, my dad died. When I was nine, my mom died. When I was ten, I joined up with SEES, and then, Shinjiro-san…I almost killed him too. Toys are something that you play with when you're a kid. People say that being a kid is supposed to be the best time of your life, but…I guess I never had much time for toys. Maybe that's why I don't like them."

"Sour grapes, huh?" murmured Minako.

Ken almost jumped when he heard her voice. "Oh, you were listening? No, it's not that. I just…I don't really have a use for toys."

Minako saw the wistful look in Ken's eyes, and remembered the conversations she'd had with him when they were living in the dorms together. He'd wanted so badly to be a kid, had wanted to care about TV shows and superheroes and the sorts of things that other ten year olds spent time worrying about. Now that it was over, he had an opportunity, but…those years he'd lost being too old for his age were gone forever. He couldn't have those back.

"When I was a kid, my dad left me and my mom alone," said Kanji. Minako hadn't even realized that he'd come up behind them while they were talking, and by the mortified look on Ken's face, he hadn't noticed either. "It pissed me off, but…it made me want to get stronger, so that I could be the one to look out for my mom. That's what I wanted, but…"

Another burst of laughter echoed around the room, followed by the appearance of a green polka-dotted giraffe doing complicated cartwheels. The giraffe had knit mittens on all four hooves. Yosuke and Minako exchanged a concerned look.

"I'm a lot better at making stuff than I am at fighting," finished Kanji. "I used to act all tough, cause I was embarrassed about it, but…then I met Yosuke-senpai, and Yu-senpai. I'm not embarrassed anymore, I don't care if people laugh, I just…I couldn't protect him." Kanji stared awkwardly as his feet. "The guy who made it all make sense to me, I couldn't use these big 'ol hands to protect him when he needed it. All I can do is sew and knit, and make stupid little toys. "

"I couldn't protect my mom either," Ken told him. "And in the end, I couldn't protect Minako-san, because I'm just a kid. Everybody's always telling me, I'm just a kid. Nothing that I do can ever be enough."

"Ken…" Minako wanted to say something to comfort him, to tell him that she didn't blame him, or that she didn't think of him as just a useless kid. Even as she groped for the words, she knew it wouldn't matter. Ken was a practical person. He'd always had to be. She couldn't comfort him with platitudes or contrived reassurances. All she could do was stand there and watch him hurt.

Again, Minako thought, again, I helped to hurt him. I didn't want to, I didn't mean to, but I did it anyway.

Lost in her own self-loathing as she was, Minako almost didn't notice the shadow coming towards her, until she heard Yosuke shout out "incoming!" Looking up, she saw a huge, off-white cloth clown, with crazy tufts of red fluff coming out of each ear, and a big piece of red felt balled up to make a nose that was too large for the clown's face. The eyes were the worst part, menacing, yellow, and slanted just like the eyes of Minako's other self had been. Instinctively, Minako felt herself moving her body in between Ken and the clown. She heard him let out an exasperated little exclamation as she did so.

The clown struck at Kanji first, lashing out with one huge gloved hand. Evading the clumsy blow easily, Kanji whipped out his persona card, and, at the same time, his sword-wielding giant of a persona shot out of him and took a mighty swipe at the terrible clown.

Yosuke was right behind him. "Takehaya Susano-o!" he shouted. His persona hit the clown with a blast of forceful wind energy that rocked the clown backwards, but didn't manage to knock it down. "Ugh, no luck…"

Now, it was Minako's turn. Pulling out her own persona card, she felt, rather than saw the existence of Izanagi as he burst forth out of her mind, and she could sense the spells and abilities that were available to her through Izanagi. It was a disappointing array. "What?" she muttered to herself, aggravated. "Zio? That's it? Why I am so weak?"

Ken, who now had his own persona out, was trying to cast light spells on the clown, but the clown wasn't responding to the attacks. Finally, apparently annoyed by Ken's repeated yet ineffective assaults, the clown turned on Ken and kicked out with one ridiculous booted foot. Ken didn't manage to dodge in time, and hit the ground with a cry of anger.

"Ken-kun!" cried Minako. She prepared to use Zio, even if only to distract the clown for a moment so that he'd leave Ken alone long enough for the boy to get back on his feet.

She never had the chance to attack. Even before she'd spoken the words for the spell, Kanji was screaming at the clown, and his persona was rushing at it, blade already upraised. The sword sliced right through the clown's middle, emitting a blast of white lightening as it connected. Instantly, the clown disappeared in a splatter of red and black shadow essence.

In the silence that followed, Yosuke and Minako watched Kanji reach down and pull Ken back on to his feet.

"You okay?" he asked.

Ken looked disgusted. "I couldn't do it," he said, "I couldn't even hurt it. I kept trying, and trying, but nothing I did even damaged that thing!"

Kanji shrugged. "So? You pissed it off just enough o give me an opening. It was a good team strategy. Yu-senpai was always talking about strategies and working together to take the shadows down. Guess he was right. Couldn't have done it by myself."

Yosuke opened his mouth to say something, but Minako caught his eye, and he seemed to think better of it.

While Ken brushed himself off from the fall, Kanji bent down and picked something up off the ground. "Hey, look at this."

He held it up to the light, and Minako saw that it was a sort of brass double key, or, rather, it was two keys that would fit different locks, fused firmly together in the center.

"Hey, that's gotta be a clue," announced Yosuke. He took the key from Kanji, and shoved it into his pocket. "I bet this is what we need to open the next door."

Minako remembered the line of doors, and the way that each of them was complete with two locks, for two different keys. The locks were spread apart, designed to be used separately, while this double key would only be able to fit a door that had two locks packed closely together, side by side. "I don't think so," she said, shaking her head. "Still, it's probably important, whatever it is. We can ask Margaret and Igor about it when we get back."

Yosuke nodded. "Yeah, good idea. But um…let's do that tomorrow, okay? I don't know about you, but I'm beat. I'm ready to call it a night."

Minako was surprised. "I thought that you'd be the one who wanted to push forward, no matter what. After all, your friend…"

"Yu's not gonna be any better off if we waste our strength and screw this up." Yosuke was serious. "We're gonna do this the right way. Like you said, whatever it takes."

The four of them put their persona cards away, and strode back through the patchwork nightmare, towards the still open doorway to the Velvet Room. Just before she left Kanji's nightmare behind, Minako took a look back over her shoulder, and wondered how many more chances she would have to fight alongside her friends like this. In a perverse and unwelcome way, she wanted it to take a long time. Even if it couldn't take forever, every extra moment that she got to spend in this life was precious now.

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Author's Note: **Ugh, I wanted to make it a two chapter night last night, but I was exhausted…my students were really badly behaved yesterday, I'm never bringing in donuts for them again. Sugar does not do anything good for classroom management.

**Maudlin Blase, **thanks for continuing to review and encourage! I really appreciate it. You mentioned my updating frequently. See, I actually write most of this story on the train or on the bus. I unfortunately spend about three hours a day either on a train or a bus, so I have plenty of time to finish a chapter or two. I write it all out in a notebook while in transit, then I type it up when I get home and go to bed. So really, it's just the fact that my schedule lends itself to this sort of thing that lets me write a lot, otherwise I'd be updating a lot less frequently!

Speaking of updating and of reviewing…nah, nevermind, I'll tell you next chapter.

**Chapter Fifteen**

Minako, Yosuke, Kanji, and Ken walked back through the open doorway into the middle of what looked like the prelude to gang warfare. On one side of the room, Fuuka had her persona out, and was apparently trying to use it's support abilities to scan the areas inside each of the locked doors. Behind her, the remaining members of SEES were rallied together, glaring warily across the room at a small, pig-tailed girl, who also seemed to be trying to use her persona to scan. Behind her were the collected members of Yosuke's team, and they were, in turn, trying to stare down the various members of SEES.

"Hey, what the hell is going on out here?" asked Yosuke, barreling immediately into the space between the two groups. "Rise, where were you? We could have used your help in there!"

"It's not my fault," pouted the girl named Rise, pointing one slender finger accusingly at Fuuka. "I can't do anything while she's here. Kouzeon can't sense anything but her!"

"Excuse me," murmured Fuuka,, with an atypical edge evident in her soft, obliging voice, "but it is your persona that is interfering with my readings. Hera can't seem to do anything without this other persona getting in the way of her abilities."

"Yosuke-senpai!" A pleading look came into Rise's eyes and she made a very pretty, if somewhat childishly mournful face at Yosuke. "You've got to get her out of here! Yu-senpai is waiting for us, we can't afford to waste all of this time!"

Fuuka chose not to say anything in response to that, instead she murmured something under her breath, and her persona again attempted to do a scan of one of the nearby doors.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Yosuke shook his head violently. "Cut it out! Come on, there's no need for this kid stuff. Can't the two of you work together or something? Like, find a way to fuse your abilities to make the scans even stronger?"

Shaking her head, Fuuka sighed, and her persona vanished back into her. "I'm afraid that won't be possible. For some reason, something about our persona abilities seems to be preventing them from functioning at the same time. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Fuuka," said Minako, interrupting Rise before she'd had a chance to put in her two cents. "We're all tired. It's already been a very busy day full of lots of exhausting surprises. Let's head back to Junpei's for tonight. We can try to fix the issue with your two personas tomorrow."

As Rise's persona also disappeared, and the two tense groups began to whisper and mutter amongst themselves, Junpei hurried over to Minako's side.

"Dude," he said urgently, "did you see her? That's Rise Kujikawa!"

Minako raised an eyebrow at him. She hadn't been kidding when she'd said she was tired. "You don't say. Who's she supposed to be?"

"You don't know?" Junpei was almost jumping up and down with excitement. "She's Risette, the famous pop idol! I see her on TV all the time, but she's soo much cuter in person…do you think Yosuke could introduce me?"

"Isn't she a little young for you?" asked Minako. The girl didn't look like she could be any older than fifteen.

Junpei snorted. "She's seventeen, so, no, she's not. And hey, who are you to talk about stuff like that? Weren't you with Shinjiro-san last night? He's like, four years older than you. They do say, though, that the man should always be older."

Minako turned white, then a little bit pink. "How do you know about that?" she asked in a whisper, pulling Junpei closer to her so that no one else would hear. "No one else was around! Were you spying on us?"

"Nah, of course not. But hey, it wasn't hard to find out. I know how you tick, get used to it." Junpei grinned at her, but then the smile slipped off of his face, and he continued in an equally hushed voice, "by the way, great save today, when you were telling Yosuke that you'd help him get his friend back. I don't think he would have let us out alive if you'd said anything else. I guess now we're just gonna what, keep stringing him along until we think of a better plan? Or, do you already have one?"

It took Minako a moment to sort through what Junpei had said. Finally, she murmured, "Junpei, I meant all of it. We are going to get Narukami back. I made a promise. "

Junpei shook his head. But…if we do that, then you'll have to…" he swallowed, and stopped, then forced himself through the rest of the sentence. "You'll have to go back, won't you? I mean, you wouldn't do that. This is your second chance, right? You can't go blowing it, we've got so much we haven't been able to do together yet!" Frowning, he uncharacteristically reached out and grabbed her hand. "It's gonna be fun. We're gonna have a good time, make some memories to laugh about later, just like in the good old days. Look, I'm not the only the one. We all want you to stay."

"Everyone else seems to be handling this just fine," retorted Minako, and she was surprised at how bitterly the words came out.

Junpei just frowned at her. "Nobody else really gets it," he admitted. "It's still all some big adventure, finding the missing boy, having another crack at saving the world. Someday, maybe even tomorrow they're all gonna look around and realize what it means. Do you want them all, do you want me to wake up every day thinking that we might have had a chance to save you, and that we just didn't take it? You can't seriously be that selfish. That's not the Mina-tan that I know. "

Selfish? Somehow, that didn't seem fair to Minako. How was sacrificing herself to rescue another person a selfish act? How was giving up what she wanted so that others could be happy a selfish act? Even as she railed against it internally, a little, nagging voice in the back of her mind said to her that selfishness was putting what she wanted before the feelings of others. Didn't she want to be the hero again? Wouldn't that end up hurting the people she loved?

"You have to understand," she told Junpei, hoping, wishing, praying that he would. "It's complicated, so…no matter what I do, I've done something wrong. If someone's going to suffer, why can't it just be me?"

Junpei shrugged. "Because it can't, that's just not how it works when people care about you. Sorry. I thought that was what you wanted. You said you didn't want to be alone. At least, that weird, creepy, yellow-eyed thing said it, and I guess that's pretty much the same thing."

Minako took a deep breath. "If there's any other way," she said, "to get Yu Narukami back, then I'll take it. I want to live, Junpei. I want another chance." I want it so badly, she thought, that just thinking about losing it makes me all tense and choked up on the inside. I don't want to think about it, it's too painful. I want to just face the facts and get it over with. "If we can find another solution, I'd be more than happy to go along with it, but I can't be responsible for his death. He has friends, he has a family. He didn't deserve this."

"What, and you did?" Junpei didn't look impressed with her speech.

"But if there isn't a way," insisted Minako, ignoring his interjection, "then we have to, we absolutely have to understand and expect that this is going to be the last time. It won't be the first time I've left you. You won't be taken by surprise. This time, at least, we'll have the chance to do the one thing we never could do before. We'll get to say goodbye."

Minako could tell that Junpei wasn't ready to give up, and that he had more to say. Before he'd had the chance, however, she could hear Akihiko's voice coming from behind her, and she turned around to see him walking over from where he'd been talking to Ken and Kanji near the still open doorway.

"Hey," he said. Minako knew this wasn't the time for romance, but even hearing the familiar tones of his voice still made her heart do a fluttery little dance inside her chest. He smiled that winning smile that had made every girl at Gekkoukan swoon, and said, "Do you have a minute? I want to talk to you about…um…about everything. About us."

Junpei, even in his current state of frustration and concern, knew when to make himself scarce. Mouthing "We'll talk later," to Minako, and forcing her to briefly meet his eyes, he hurried off into the throng of other people, leaving Minako and Akihiko alone.

"So," said Akihiko. He looked like he felt uncomfortable. The color in his cheeks was cute, especially, thought Minako, in a guy who was usually so confident.

"So," agreed Minako. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, and then, unexpectedly, Akihiko reached out and gently pushed a lock of hair out of Minako's face, and his fingers brushed against Minako's lip as he did it. She expected to feel the same delighted shiver that she usually felt whenever Akihiko touched her, but for some reason the gesture just left her feeling a little bit lonely. She couldn't understand that feeling at all.

"Look, about what you said…I mean, when we were in that TV place." Akihiko seemed to be having trouble finding the right words to put together. "I know that I've been…different, since you got back. It's hard for me, it's been such a long time. Still, I…I care about you. You know that, right?"

Minako wanted to know it. She wanted to believe it, but the persistent image of Mitsuru and Akihiko kept cropping up in her mind, reminding her of proof to the contrary. In silence, she watched the expectant look on his face. When she didn't respond, he frowned.

"Let's go get some coffee tonight, just you and me," he said. "I know, It's not dinner, it's not…it's not a date." Minako's heart sank a little bit as he said that. Would it have killed him to sweep her off her feet? "I want to talk to you, to listen to you. I want to remember who you are. If you're worried that I've forgotten about you, let's try to fix it. You mean something to me, I just don't know what that is anymore. I want to find out."

"Okay," said Minako. She didn't know what else there was to say.

"Tonight, then. Seven o'clock. I'll pick you up in the car. Don't be late." With that, Akihiko walked off. Minako was left feeling empty and upset, although she couldn't put her finger on exactly which feelings stemmed from where.

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Author's Note: **Okay, so there were some pretty epic typos in the last chapter. I believe I have corrected them, but I apologize for that. I' must have been more tired than I thought when I was doing my proofing.

**Jenni Saba**, I wouldn't feel too sorry for Junpei, he's probably not gonna take this sitting down. **Boy1324**, there will definitely be some further conflict between the two groups. **Reaching OutFES**, ah, so it's romance you want! Fear not, there is a bit of that on the horizon for poor, frustrated Minako and…a gentleman. Or two. She does seem to be popular with the gentlemen. That's all you get for now, stay tuned!

**Chapter Sixteen**

"So, let me make sure I've got this right," said Chie, as she and rest of the investigation team sat around in the food court at Junes. "There's a group of mysterious older persona users who, three years ago, saved the world from shadows. Their leader, Minako Arisato, got trapped in some kind of 'seal' that kept the shadows out and the people safe. Now she's back, and Yu-kun is trapped in the seal instead."

"Correct," agreed Naoto. "It seems that two entities from the Velvet Room interfered on Minako-chan's behalf. They have now gone missing and are likely on the run."

"Oh, but," added Yukiko hastily, "Minako-chan didn't want any of this. She didn't even know about it until after Yu was taken."

Somehow, that didn't sound right to Yosuke, who had been listening attentively to his friends' recapitulation of the case so far. Yes, Minako and her friends had saved the world from the shadows, but…if so, then why were there still shadows coming out of the TV world today? There was something else, too, something that just didn't sit right with him. It was something that Yukiko had said, about Minako's return.

"Wait," he interrupted, "wait, hold on. Do we really buy that? I mean, about Minako-chan not wanting any of this to happen?"

Kanji shrugged. "Doesn't seem like she planned it, if that's what you mean."

"No, it's not what I mean." Yosuke shook his head. "Look, I don't think she was trying to get Yu hurt, or trapped, or killed, or whatever he is. But…she didn't want to come back? That just seems crazy to me. I mean, nobody wants to die. If you knew that you were gonna die, but that you could save yourself somehow, wouldn't you do it? I know I would."

So, he wondered, why isn't she running? Why would she agree to help us?

"I see." Naoto nodded, looking thoughtful. "I think it would be wise for us to keep a close eye on Minako-chan until we know more about her stake in all of this. Perhaps there is nothing to be worried about, but…as Yosuke-senpai says, she has too many motives to want all of this to go away. Her friends, also, will hardly be willing to just let her return to the seal without even a fight."

As the others nodded, Yosuke thought for a moment about how disturbing it was that none of this bothered him. The idea of some little girl sacrificing herself for the greater good should have sent cold chills down his spine, or awakened his protective, masculine spirit. Instead, the idea of trading Minako for Yu seemed perfectly reasonable to him. What did that say about him as a person? He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Saki-senpai had once joked with him that everyone had their "people." Your "people," she'd said, were the ones that you'd jump in front of a bus to protect. In a half-laughing, half-disappointed voice, she'd prattled on about how she'd never find her "people" in this town, where she was having trouble making real friends and real connections. Yosuke knew that Yu had been one of his "people," and that the connection between them made all the difference. Minako just wasn't in that category. Even if that didn't make the feelings okay, it justified them enough for him. If he had been in a building with Minako and Yu, and a crazy guy with a gun had come in, and Yosuke only had time to protect one of them, he knew he'd go for Yu. How was this situation really any different?

Despite all his justifications, Yosuke was still uncomfortable. He changed the subject.

"Hey, I think I'm going to take Minako-chan to see Dojima-san tomorrow," he said. "We can say that she's Yu's old girlfriend from the city."

Kanji didn't look to happy about that. "Uhh," he said, "is that such a good idea, senpai? Dojima-san's pretty worked up, he's in bad shape. Might not be a good time to talk to him."

"Trust me," said Yosuke. He honestly wasn't interested in whether or not Minako got anything out of Dojima. What he was really after was something totally different. There was someone else who lived in that house that he was hoping Minako would be able to meet.

"Hey!" Chie pointed across the food court at a table near the back. "Isn't that Minako-chan and Akihiko-san over there?"

Yosuke looked. The two of them were sitting across from each other, having a couple of Junes brand sodas. Akihiko was too far away for Yosuke to see him clearly, but Minako was just close enough that Yosuke could read the miserable expression on her face.

"Oh," added Yukiko, "and over there, that's Junpei-san and Shinjiro-san, right? I'm getting better at these names." Now Yukiko was pointing at a totally different table not too far from Yosuke's own, where Junpei and Shinjiro had their heads together and were buried in quiet, earnest conversation.

Yosuke spent a moment looking back and forth between the two tables, watching the changing expressions and the interactions that he could see but not hear. "Seriously," he muttered after a moment, "what is wrong with these people?"

**Meanwhile, at Minako's table…**

"Sorry that this isn't really coffee," Akihiko said. "I'm not too sure what else is around here. Never been to Inaba before."

Minako hadn't even touched her soda. "It's fine," she muttered. She wasn't feeling well.

"So, um…" Akihiko seemed at a loss for what to say next. "What did you want to talk about?"

"What?" Minako blinked. "You're the one who invited me."

"Oh, right. That's true." Akihiko sighed, then picked up and chugged his soda before slamming it back down on to the table. He gave her the look of a man who was steeling himself for a painful blow. "After you died," he began, then stopped and mumbled, "jeez, this is such a weird conversation. After you died, I was…upset."

You have a funny way of showing it, thought Minako. When Akihiko seemed to be waiting for her reaction, she nodded encouragingly at him.

"I didn't want to see anyone," he continued, clearly forcing himself through words that he wasn't eager to say. "It was hard. I was angry. It felt like you had abandoned me, just when things were starting to get good between us. I needed a distraction, and for once, training wasn't enough."

He paused again, doubtfully, and he looked so obviously uncomfortable that Minako finally took pity on him. "I know about Mitsuru," she said.

"What? You…you do?" Akihiko just stared at her. "Did Junpei tell you?"

You should have told me yourself, thought Minako accusingly. Out loud, she said "No, I saw you last night, at the inn."

Akihiko turned white. "Oh," he said. "I'm sorry. I wish you hadn't seen that. I wanted to explain-!"

"I said it's okay." Minako sighed. "Listen, I know what happened. You were lonely, you were sad, and Mitsuru was there for you. She made you feel better, made you forget. That's…that's normal. I don't want it to be that way, but it is. I know what that feels like, moving on because you anything else would hurt too much."

A little glint of anger suddenly came into Akihiko's eyes, and he said, perhaps more loudly than he'd intended, "yeah, I didn't know about that. I didn't know about Shinji." Minako could hear the hint of jealousy in his voice, and it was exhilarating and exasperating at the same time.

"I left him for you," she reminded him. I left him, she thought, in a hospital bed, dying, for you. Really, I have no right at all to throw stones, even if I want to.

"So…can we call it even, then?" Akihiko smiled, and for a moment, Minako was shocked that it didn't hurt. His smile made her want to smile, but not in the deep, tingly way that it had not so long ago. This time, she was just happy to see that he was happy. It was a good, relaxing feeling, but there was something empty about it as well, as though she'd lost track of something that had been filling up a void in her heart.

He reached out and put his hand on top of hers, and she let him. It felt the same way it had when he'd been holding her hand on Junpei's couch. His touch was uncertain, comfortable, and also disappointing.

"Yeah," she told him, "I think we're even."

Pushing his empty soda bottle aside, Akihiko leaned in over the table, and took Minako's face in his hands. He kissed her hesitantly, and she closed her eyes, eager for that old feeling of relief and excitement that came with Akihiko's kisses and embraces. Instead, his lips were uncomfortably soft against hers, and she could feel the awkwardness of the position they were in, hunched over each other with the metal table between them. Unexpectedly, as Akihiko kissed her, she pictured the look that had been in Shinjiro's eyes when he took her by surprise at the inn, and had kissed her like a starving man. Shinjiro, who she'd thrown away just the same way Aki had thrown her away, because at the time there hadn't seemed like any other possibility.

Breaking away from him, Minako looked into Akihiko's eyes and asked, "What about Mitsuru?"

"It doesn't matter," said Akihiko, his hand closing over hers again. "You're back now. We can have the stuff we always talked about, together."

He leaned in for another kiss, but Minako had seen the uncertainty in his eyes when he'd answered her question, and she was sure that the same look was now floating around in her own face. "But it does matter," she insisted. "You care about her. The fact that I'm here now doesn't make what you had…what you have with her any less true. Just like what you have with her doesn't mean that we didn't have something wonderful once."

She could hear herself saying the words, could see the surprise on Akihiko's face, and yet Minako still wasn't quite sure what was happening. Here was her chance to take him back, to start over from where she'd left off, to have the happy ending that her other self had confessed to dreaming of. The image of Akihiko smiling and laughing with her on the roof ofGekkoukan High came swimming into her head, somehow coupled with the image of Akihiko and Mitsuru kissing at the Amagi inn. Behind it all, somewhere that she could feel rather than see, she had the image of Shinjiro's face, and the pain in his voice when he'd tried to tell her how much she meant to him.

"I love you, Aki," she said, and her voice wavered slightly as she formed the words. "You know I always will."

"Yeah," said Akihiko, and there was a hoarse note in his voice that hadn't been there before. "You too."

Without another word, she stood up and left the table, knowing instinctively that Akihiko wouldn't try to follow her. She couldn't explain the way she was feeling, and for a moment, she didn't feel as though she needed to. She was leaving him, she knew that. There would be no turning around and running back into Akihiko's arms, no spending time with him in his dorm room, or in the abandoned classrooms after school. If she came to a boxing match to watch him, it wouldn't be her face that he'd be looking for in the crowd, or her hands that he'd be holding while he watched TV and ate ramen on the couch. That hurt. The loss of those things she'd loved so much hurt her, and yet…she felt safe, now, more secure, knowing that she'd moved on, too. Somehow, despite the years between them, despite the way that time had flowed without her, Minako realized that she'd already left him in her mind the moment that she'd seen him kissing Mitsuru, and had realized that he didn't just belong to her anymore.

Besides, she thought, this might be her last chance. There were thing she had to do, people she needed to be with, because she'd never had the opportunity before, and maybe she never would again. She had to fix the things she'd broken, before it was too late, and it would so soon be too late.

Lost in her own puzzling reflections, Minako almost smacked right into Junpei, who she met by accident on her way out of the food court.

"Oh," she said, proud of the confidence and unsteadiness of her voice. "Hey, I'm glad you're here. Do you know if Shinji is still back at your house?"

Junpei, for some reason, looked unsettled. "Um," he told her, "actually, you just missed him."

The confident, positive feeling in Minako's chest dropped sickeningly away. "What?" she demanded. "You mean, he was here?"

"Yeah, just now. We were talking about, um…we had something we had to discuss, man to man. Anyway, if you go back to the house, you'll probably-!"

Minako ran, already not listening to Junpei as she went full tilt towards the road that led back in the direction of Junpei's home.

**Chapter Seventeen**

**Author's Note: This one's important! **Hey all you wonderful people! I'm looking at my outline for this story, and it looks like it's time to make this announcement. Minako is on a time budget, and now, so are we. I've plotted out three endings for this story, each of them very different. Just like in the persona games, I'll call them the Bad Ending, the Normal Ending, and the True Ending. I'm going to let you decide which one I use. We're almost at 50 reviews for this story, and that is so wonderful, you guys are the best readers ever! I'd love to hear more from you, though. I mean, what author wouldn't? And some of you are reading but not posting!

So, this is how it's gonna work. If, by the time we reach the ending, we have between 50 and 60 reviews, I'll give you the bad ending. If we have between 60 and 80 reviews, I'll give you the normal ending, and if we manage to get to between 90 and 100 reviews, I'll give you guys the true ending, plus I'll link the Bad and Normal endings as well, so you can check them out! Remember, a review doesn't have to be glowing praise. I mean, I certainly don't mind if you'd like to praise, but you can also make a comment, a critique, or even ask a question, or you can tell me something you'd like to see more of or less of in later chapters! Trust me, if you comment, I'll answer.

There's still tons of time, we're only slightly more than halfway through the story. Keep the endings in the back of your minds, though…

Okay, honestly, I'm gonna post the chapter now. Sorry about all that talking.

**Chapter Seventeen**

Unable to pace herself in her haste to reach Shinjiro, Minako soon found that she was out of breath. She slowed down to a trot, inwardly cursing the terrible timing of the universe that had led Shinjiro to be at the food court just in time to see her and Akihiko in a compromising situation. What had it made him think? Due to fate's increasingly cruel sense of humor, Minako felt she had reason to assume the worst.

Even as her steps got slower and slower, she heard the sound of wheels on the pavement, and turned to see Junpei's car pulling up alongside her. "Hey," he called, leaning out of the window, "Get in, I'll give you a ride. We'll get there faster. Jeez, I was gonna offer before, but you just took off."

Minako gratefully climbed up into the passenger seat, and Junpei started steering them towards the house. "Seriously, though," he said conversationally, "I am the best wingman ever. Wait, do girls even have wingmen?"

"Why were you at the food court?" asked Minako. "And with Shinji? You weren't spying on me, were you?"

"Of course not." Junpei scowled. "Like I'd do that. Who needs to spy on you? You do stuff like kiss Akihiko-san right out there in the open! Junes is a public place, you know. Anyway," he added, and he face grew darker even as he said it, "it's nothing to do with that. Shinjiro-san and I had some important stuff to talk about, just the two of us. I can't tell you about it." He paused a moment before saying, in a less serious tone of voice, "anyway, we're on a whirlwind adventure to find your man, and to convince him that he shouldn't be worried about you making out with your old boyfriend, right? So, hang on, we're running this red light."

Junpei suited the action to the word, and several angry drivers began honking as he barreled past them and sped away.

"Um," said Minako," thank you, I think?" The erratic driving wasn't making her feel terribly safe, but she could appreciate Junpei making an effort for her.

"Yeah," he said, "don't' sweat it. This is just like in one of those awful chick flick movies that Yukari watches, where the girl goes running after the guy, only seconds after she realizes that he's the one she's been crazy about all along. That's it, isn't it?" He grinned at the guilty look on Minako's face. "Sure. I can see it in your face, this is the real deal. Shinjiro-san, huh? Never would have guessed. Still, I guess it does make sense…"

Minako smiled as Junpei kept on talking. If anyone, she thought, knew what "the real thing" was like, then Junpei would. After all, he had been the one who had first taught her that love could be painful. All the stories and fairytales seemed to paint love like something brilliant and magical, that never hurt, and always healed. It was only when Junpei had fallen hard for Chidori that Minako had recognized, just by watching him, that love could be a terrible thing.

"Junpei," she asked, "what happened to Chidori?"

Junpei didn't take his eyes off the road. Minako saw his mouth harden into a thin, stoic line as he bit out the words. "She died. Almost a year ago."

Somehow, Minako felt that she had already known that. "I'm sorry. Did she-?"  
"No." Junpei cut her off quickly. "No, it was a car accident. She hit a tree late at night while she was driving back from the city." After a moment, he added, under his breath, "At least, they said it was an accident."

They drove along in silence for a while, and Minako wondered in surprise that Junpei could drive so fast, and disobey traffic laws the way he did, all the while knowing that it was a driving accident that had killed the woman he loved. Maybe, she reflected, that was why he did it. Maybe he wanted to be sure that it really was dangerous to drive erratically, and that Chidori hadn't gone out of her way to take her own life. After all, she had been a very sick girl at one point, and she had tried several times to injure herself through various different means. Even if it had seemed, after everything, as though she was entirely cured of her depression, Minako knew that those sorts of things didn't always just go away.

Unable to think of any platitude that could take the place of Chidori, Minako didn't say a word until the car had stopped in front of Junpei's house. Just before getting out of the car, she looked over at him, and said, "She loved you, you know." Leaning to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, Minako added, "and so do I. Er, not like that, of course, but-!"

Unexpectedly, Junpei laughed. "Yeah," he said. "I know. We're here. Come on, let's go get your man."

It took several interminable seconds for Junpei to find the house key, and then to fumble it into the lock. The whole time she was waiting, Minako had to force herself not to bounce up and down with impatience. When the door finally opened, she hurried inside, and was indescribably relieved to hear a familiar, hacking cough coming from the area of Junpei's kitchen.

Shinjiro was standing at the counter, and was shoving cooking utensils and various unopened packages of groceries into a sack that lay on the floor next to him. When she saw him, Minako suddenly wished that she'd spent more time on the way here thinking of what she was going to say. The feeling she got when she looked at him was the one she'd been craving, the tingly, anticipatory feeling that slid across her shoulders and down her spine, making her aware of a hot sensation in her cheeks, and the sudden desire to find a mirror to check her hair.

Shinjiro coughed again, and Junpei made a face. "Dude, don't cough all over the food," he admonished. "And what's all this stuff for?"

"It's nothing." Shinjiro looked up at Junpei, and noticeably avoided even seeing Minako. "Sorry. I was just leaving."

"Shinji," began Minako, "I-!"

Shinjiro cut her off, shaking his head. "Don't apologize," he muttered. "I already told you, you didn't do anything wrong."

Minako wasn't ready to give up so easily. "But," she insisted, "Akihiko and I…please, I want to explain."

"You already did." Carefully, Shinjiro lifted a large, ceramic serving spoon, and placed it at the bottom of the sack. "I heard what you said in that TV place. I was the one who left you first. You're right. Maybe if I hadn't been so weak, if I hadn't gone down so easy to that Strega guy, but…it's too late, now." Picking up the sack, he stepped forward, and encountered Minako blocking his path out of the kitchen. "Get out of the way. I've got places to be."

"What, you're just gonna leave?" asked Junpei, incredulous.

"Sure." Shinjiro shrugged, but he looked as though he felt a little guilty, even as he said it. "She's got Aki to protect her. And she's got you. I've got no more business here."

Junpei shook his head. "But, what about what you said, what about our-?"

"Forget it, You can do it without me." Shinjiro again tried to shove past Minako, but she stood her ground and gazed up into his eyes with a fierceness that forced him to look at her.

"I don't want you to go," she said.

Shinjiro grunted. "Trust me, you'll get over it."

"Maybe I don't want to get over it," retorted Minako, and, with a boldness born of desperation, she suddenly reached up, grabbed his shoulders, and kissed him.

"Mmgh!" exclaimed Shinjiro, totally taken aback. His body stiffened in surprise, and he dropped the bag of cooking things, which clattered to the ground by his feet. Minako thought she heard the sound of something breaking, but she didn't care. Closing her eyes, she drew herself closely against him, and continued to kiss him until his stillness gave way, and she felt his arms wind around her, his palms pressing hard against the small of her back. Then he began to return the kiss, hesitantly at first, then more and more aggressively, a little involuntary groan escaping him as her lips parted to admit his tongue. Suddenly, he pulled away from her and began coughing again, and Minako had to let him go so that he had a chance to catch his breath. She watched him double over for a moment until he the coughing fit ended, and then he straightened up, staring at her with a wildly confused expression in his eyes.

W-what?" he managed to stammer out.

"I told you," repeated Minako, "I don't want you to leave."

"But…you and Aki," insisted Shinjiro, somewhat uncertainly. "Just now, at the food court."

"I was trying to tell you," Minako explained, "We were saying goodbye. It's been three years, and we're both…we're both invested in other people. I have a chance now that I thought I'd never have again, and I don't want to waste it. I want to spend whatever time I have left with you."

Just for a moment, a flash of darkness came into Shinjiro's eyes. He and Junpei exchanged a brief look, and for some reason, that seemed to be enough. Shinjiro's face cleared up again. Minako raised an eyebrow at Junpei, but he was studiously examining the contents of Shinjiro's abandoned sack, and apparently didn't notice Minako's gaze on him.

"You don't mean that," Shinjiro said, and Minako turned her focus back to him. "You're just upset about Aki and Mitsuru. He told me about what happened at the inn. Listen, it's always you that he-!"

"I don't care about Mitsuru." Minako was a bit surprised to hear herself say it, but even then she knew that it was true. If anything, Mitsuru's interference had made it clearer to Minako where she really wanted to be. "I want to be with you. I want to have the things that we never had before, and I want to take the chances that we didn't take, because…because it's not too late." But, said a little voice in the back of her mind, it will be. It will be, and I don't know how soon. I can't wait around to see how I feel about this later, or even tomorrow. I need to go for it now, whatever that ends up meaning.

"Dude," said Junpei, "you should have seen the way she ran when she heard that you were back here at the house. If I hadn't picked her up in the car I think she would have run straight into traffic and gotten herself killed, she wanted to see you so badly. Trust me on this one, man; you don't want to pass this up."

Minako and Shinjiro both stared at Junpei for a moment. "Um," asked Minako carefully, "Junpei? Isn't there…something you should be doing right now? Somewhere else? You know, somewhere that isn't right here?"

"Huh? Oh, um, sure." Junpei flushed for a moment, then hurried off towards the stairs, muttering as he went, "Jeez, its' my house, not a damn love hotel. I really am the best wingman ever."

Minako smiled at his muttering, and couldn't help but agree, in her own mind, that he was right about the wingman thing. Shinjiro put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up into his questioning eyes.

"Let's make up for what we lost," she begged him.

A familiar grin started to spread across Shinjiro's face, and this time he reached for her, holding her against him with one arm as he muttered, "I don't…really believe it," he told her. "For whatever its worth, I have dreams that end this way."

Minako arched her neck so that Shinjiro wouldn't have to bend down so far to kiss her again. She had just closed her eyes and begun to relax her body into the deepness of the kiss, when the doorbell rang.

"Shit," growled Shinjiro, reluctantly letting her go.

From the other side of the door, Minako could hear Yosuke's voice. He sounded annoyed. "Hey," he called, "is anybody in there? Are we going into the TV today, or what?"

**Chapter Eighteen**

**Author's Note: **Dun dun DUN! Double update!

Wow, I got so much great feedback from you guys on the last chapter! Thanks for taking the time! I'll take all of it into account as we move forward with this story, and that's a promise.

**Reaper of the Rebels** made a good point. Allow me to clarify. The "bad" ending is not actually, like a bad ending full of zero effort and multiple typographical errors. I planned out three endings, each very different from the other two, and I like them all. I just thought this little multi-ending game might be a fun way to keep you all interested and on the edge of your seats! We don't have to play if you don't want to. I certainly don't want anyone feeling obligated to review against their will.

Okay, and now for some battling inside the TV world! Huzzah!

**Chapter Eighteen**

Minako, Shinjiro, and Junpei, accompanied by an irritated Yosuke were, for obvious reasons, the last ones to arrive inside the TV. The rest of SEES and of the investigation team were already there, and Minako could sense the tension in the room as soon as she walked into it. Fuuka and Rise were glaring daggers at each other across the room again, and many of the other members of both teams were warily keeping their distance from members of the opposite team. Surprisingly, Kanji and Ken had separated themselves from the throng, and were chatting in low voices off to the side.

Minako, Junpei, and Shinjiro hurried to join their team. Akihiko took one look at the flushed expression on her face, cast a glance over at Shinjiro, and smiled a deprecating little smile before turning away to talk to Mitsuru.

Well, crap, thought Minako, with an internal sigh of exasperation. This didn't look like it was going to be the most fun shadow-battling experience any of them had ever had.

"So," she announced, as brightly and enthusiastically as she could. All eyes in the room turned to focus on her, and not all of them felt friendly. "First thing on the agenda today is talking to Igor and Margaret about that key we found. Kanji?"

Kanji produced the double-handled key. "I got it right here," he assured her.

"Okay," Minako smiled the forcedly cheerful smile of a reluctant leader under duress. "Let's head into the Velvet Room."

"Buddy system time!" quipped Junpei, picking up on Minako's mood. "Does everybody have your battle buddy? Make sure you take your buddy by the hand, and do not leave your buddy until you have all hands and arms inside the Velvet Room!"

Minako laughed. Junpei winked at her. Thank heavens, she thought, some things, at least, never change.

Igor was, of course, waiting eagerly for them inside the Velvet Room. His eyes twinkled with fiendish delight as they began to pass through the door in pairs. Margaret, on the other hand, looked tired. There were dark circles creasing her normally smooth and perfect eyelids. The exhaustion made her look more human, which was both comforting and unsettling at the same time.

"It seems," said Igor, before Minako had even tried to open her mouth, "that you have a question for me."

For the umpteenth time, she asked herself, whether Igor could read her mind. It was either that, or she had a really terrible poker face. "Yeah," she said out loud, "We do. It's about this key."

Kanji dutifully held up the double key and Igor leaned forward to scrutinize it carefully. For some reason, the sight of the key seemed to amuse him. "Interesting," he murmured, "very interesting. So that, then, is where they are hiding."

"Where's 'that?'" asked Yosuke, impatiently. Minako didn't blame him. Igor took some getting used to.

Instead of answering, Igor looked at Margaret, who pointed over at a door that, as far as Minako knew, had not been there when they'd come to the Velvet Room the day before. This door was significantly larger than all the rest, and displayed an intricate pattern of four large glowing locks, each of which had space for two keys placed side by side, or, more probably, one key that consisted of two keys fused together.

"Where does that lead?" she asked, not expecting an answer.

Margaret shook her head. "I do not know," she admitted. "It was not there before. I can only assume that it is a construct of Elizabeth and Theodore's wills."

"It seems," added Igor, silencing Margaret with a look, "that you have already obtained the first of the keys required to enter the sanctum of our former residents. Three keys remain to be found."

Thank you, captain obvious, thought Minako. From the look on Yosuke's face, she could tell that he was thinking pretty much the same thing.

"Oh boy…" Junpei's voice, sounding less than enthusiastic, came from behind Minako, and she turned to see him holding up one of the small brass keys. "I guess it's my turn today, huh? Jeez, warn a guy next time." This last bit was directed at the universe in general, so Minako ignored it.

It took a few minutes for the other key to surface. Everyone present began digging in pockets and bags, each of them relieved to find his or herself empty handed. Finally, a female voice from somewhere within Yosuke's party spoke up. "Um…I've got one too."

It was the short haired girl who so often made comments from the peanut gallery. Minako thought that she had heard Yosuke call her "Chie-chan," once before.

Chie looked over at Junpei. "Uh," she asked, "you're not…afraid of thunderstorms, are you?"

"Huh? Me? No way, man." Junpei snorted. "That's kid stuff."

Yosuke laughed. "That's good, because there are gonna be thunderstorms in there for sure."

Together, Junpei and Chie approached the second door, each with a key in hand. Minako and Yosuke accompanied them by mutual unspoken agreement.

"Here goes," muttered Junpei.

Chie nodded. "Ready? One, two, three-!"

She pulled upon the door with a hasty tug, and, almost immediately, a colossal thunderclap cascaded over their ears. Chie shrieked and covered her head with her hands. Yosuke rolled his eyes.

"Come on," he said, and, dragging Chie by the wrist, he walked through the doorway, followed quickly by Junpei and Minako.

At least, thought Minako with some relief, this landscape looked a little more…normal. True, everything was dark, and the occasional flashes of lightening gave Minako only brief glimpses of tall, austere buildings and deserted, partially paved roads. Still, the lack of dancing, patchwork animals made her feel as though she had her bearings a bit better this time around.

"So," said Chie conversationally, her voice shaking as she stared at the sky, apparently trying to judge when the next bolt of lightning would strike, "This is…awkward. Are you afraid of the dark, Junpei-san? Is that why it's so dark in here?"

"Tch." Junpei ignored her. Instead he turned to Minako, and asked, "So, where do you think the bad guys are? Think they're lying in wait for us in that alley up there?"

Minako shrugged. "You'd know better than me," she told him. "After all, these are your nightmares."

"Yeah, well," muttered Junpei, "I don't know about that. See, in my nightmares, there are always…hey, watch out!"

Junpei threw himself at Minako, and shoved her bodily out of the way just as a large black sedan came careening out of nowhere and almost rammed right into her. As the car drove off into the night, Minako could see the two glowing yellow eyes perched on top of its hood.

"There. I found the bad guys," she told him. Junpei took a deep breath.

"Oh!" said Chie, "now that makes sense! I mean, so many people die in cars, every day. My dad's always nagging at me to be careful on the road, because the rate of car accidents has gone way, way up in the last two years, so it's a totally rational fear! Eek!' Another clap of thunder sent Chie scurrying over to Yosuke's side.

Minako had to hand it to the girl. Even while Chie was clearly mortally terrified of the thunder and lightning, she seemed to be genuinely trying to make Junpei feel better, remarking on how his fears were rational and that there was nothing to be ashamed of. Chie had a certain spunk to her that Minako couldn't help but like, and there was no way for Chie to know that no amount of smiling and cheery conversation on her part was going to make Junpei any happier. After all, hadn't Chidori died in a car crash? No doubt that was the memory that was haunting him in his sleep, and was subsequently now making an appearance in this nightmare shadow world.

"It's not that," muttered Junpei. "I don't…I'm not afraid of cars. I have a car, and I'm a damn good driver, too."

"Oh?" began Chie. "Well, then, what-?"

"It's the other drivers on the road," Junpei continued. "You can't rely on them to do the right thing, you can't assume that they're not gonna do something stupid and get someone killed. Everything's fine when I'm driving, because I'm in control, but…when it's someone else, all I can do is watch and hope for the best. I hate that feeling, knowing that there's nothing I can do if something goes wrong."

Another car, this one grey and white, sped by, and this time Minako was ready. She dodged nimbly out of the way, and watched as Junpei scowled at it.

Now that she thought about it, Junpei had never been particularly good at dealing with not being in control. When she'd been elected leader of SEES, he'd quite frankly thrown what could only be described as a hissy fit. Junpei needed control, needed to be able to call the shots and have the last laugh. Chidori's death, Minako now saw, really hadn't been any different. Whether she had died because of car trouble, or because she had taken her own life, Junpei hadn't, and wouldn't have been able to stop her. You can't control someone else's car, and you can't control someone else's feelings. You can only encourage, love, and hope for the best.

Chie was nodding understandingly. "Yeah, that makes sense," she said. "I mean, lots of things are like that. It's easy to fight something when it's up to you whether you win or lose. Like the shadows. We can fight them, because everything depends on the choices we make. If we screw up, well, that's it, we're dead, but…at least we could take a crack at it. Not everything's like that, right?"

Another bolt of lightning struck, not ten feet from where Chie was standing. This time, she didn't scream, but only flinched slightly, and sighed. "I don't have a lightning persona. Mine's all physical attacks and ice. Some people know how to predict just when thunderstorms are going to hit, but…even the weathermen are usually wrong about that stuff. Sometimes big storms can kill people right out in the open, in the middle of fields on days that were sunny just hours before! You can't predict them, really, and you can't be sure what they're gonna do. Natural disasters, you know? That's…that's scary stuff. You know what else is like that? Tsunamis. Tsunamis are scary."

A rumbling sound, like waves crashing against some distant foreign object came from the walls on all sides. Minako bit her lip.

"I wish," complained Yosuke, "that you hadn't said tsunamis."

"B-but," insisted Chie, "it'll be okay! I don't think I've ever had a nightmare about a Tsunami! Not once."

Then, before Chie could say another word, Minako caught sight of one of the yellow-eyed vehicles driving full-tilt towards Junpei from behind. Lightning, thought Minako. It's a vehicle, a car, with a motor. It's mechanical, it will hate lightning.

"Izanagi" she shouted, grabbing at her persona card. Instantly the persona shot out of her and confronted the oncoming car. If she timed it just right, Minako realized, then…but would there be enough time? It was almost on top of her, and Junpei would get run over if she didn't do something fast.

"Junpei," she shouted, "move. Now."

Junpei didn't ask questions. He dodged out of the way at the exact moment that a bolt of lightning struck the ground where he had been standing. "Zio!" shouted Minako, and Izanagi's lightning bolt exploded out and intercepted the lightning that was in the process of hitting the earth. The two bolts formed one impressive column of electric death, and the car drove right through them, fizzling in an instant and erupting into a cloud of red and black shadow essence.

"Whoa," said Yosuke. "That was…seriously badass."

**Chapter Nineteen**

**Author's Note: **I got a wonderfully constructive review from "anonymous" this week! Dear "anonymous," I wish I knew who you were so that I could thank you properly! Also, it seems, judging by some comments that I am getting, that many of you are not Shinjiro fans, so I'm really gonna work hard to try and convert you!

I apologize for the lack of update yesterday. I got home after 2 o'clock in the morning, tried typing up the chapter I'd written on the bus, and then gave up when I saw the number of typos and grammatical mistakes I was making.

Anyway, here it is now, better late than never!

**Chapter Nineteen**

"So…was that it? Was that the big boss?" asked Junpei, looking doubtful.

Minako began searching the ground for one of the large, brass double keys. She couldn't find one. "I don't think so," she said. "We'll have to go farther in."

"Great," sighed Chie. "Of course Kanji got the easy one. Now we have to do all the hard…eek!" Again, thunder crashed, and again, Chie panicked, jumping in surprise and scurrying to hide behind Yosuke.

"Look," said Junpei in exasperation, Chie, let me show you something."

Chie looked around warily at him. "What?"

"Next time you see lightning, start counting the seconds," Junpei instructed her. "You know, like, 'one-one thousand, two-one thousand.' Count until you hear the thunder, then stop. Every five seconds is one mile, so if the thunder and lightning are ten seconds apart, then the thunder's two miles away. Make sense?"

"Seriously?" Chie looked hopeful. "Does that really work?"

Junpei shrugged. "Course it does. So, if the lightning's close by, you run. Otherwise, you're fine."

"Wow." Chie cheered up a bit, and came out from behind Yosuke. "Okay, I'll try it. You know, you're a pretty nice guy, Junpei-san."

As the four of them walked down a back alley, keeping their eyes peeled for any more shadow cars, Chie began counting to herself every time she saw a bolt of lightning. "One-one thousand, two one-thousand, three-one thousand…" After a while, the sound of her voice died away, but Minako could still see her lips forming the words, "four one-thousand, five one-thousand," and so forth. Before long, Chie was leading the other three, forging ahead, given confidence by her brand new counting trick.

Then, just as they were turning a corner on one of the darkened streets, Chie suddenly came to a stop. "Um, guys," she said, the hesitant waver coming back into her voice, "The lightning's really close, now."

"Yeah," said Junpei, pointing just in front of him. "It's probably cause of that guy."

Minako looked up to see that standing in front of her, not three feet away, was a silver bearded giant, his brooding face inset with a shadow's glowing yellow eyes. He had a huge hammer in one hand, and a bolt of lightning poised to strike in the other.

"Thor the thunder god," she muttered. "He's an old Norse myth."

"Yeah," agreed Junpei, "I know. I went as him for Halloween once when I was a kid."

"Seriously, a god?" Yosuke was incredulous. "Last time it was just a stupid clown."

There was no time for more conversation. The shadow of Thor threw his lightning bolt, and at the same time sent his hammer crashing down towards Yosuke's head. Yosuke guarded himself to deflect the attack, but Chie took a hit on the shoulder from the lightning, and shrieked in pain.

"You said you could use ice attacks, right?" shouted Junpei. "So, let's see it. Show me what you got."

"I can't, " wailed Chie. "He's too strong, I don't have anything powerful enough to hurt him, even if I can hit him!"

She won't be able to hit him, thought Minako, especially not while she's panicking like that. On a whim, Minako called out, "Chie! Remember the trick with the counting! Count the seconds in between the lightning strikes!"

"Huh? How is that supposed to work?" asked Yosuke, as he blew a blast of ineffective wind energy into Thor's face, then hit the ground to avoid another blow.

"It's not," admitted Minako, as she sent a blast of healing in Chie's direction. "But at least it might distract her long enough to stop her from freaking out!"

Yosuke looked impressed. "Oh, yeah," he said, "Yeah, that's a pretty good idea."

Chie had begun dutifully counting the seconds, muttering "One one-thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand," while the battle around her raged. At first, it looked as though she'd never be able to attack at all, and Minako wondered if they were out of luck, and should try to retreat. After a few moments, however, Chie's face calmed, and the incessant counting began to get louder and more certain. One one-thousand," she said. "Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand!"

"Is it actually working?" asked Yosuke.

Minako shrugged.

With a roar, Chie's persona shout out of her mind, and lobbed a fierce burst of ice right into shadow Thor's face. The giant cringed, and the icicles that now clung to his beard began to weigh him down, so that he toppled over backwards on to the ground.

"He's down!" yelled Junpei. "Now's our chance! Let's go for an all-out attack!"

As one united front, they charged.

Once the battle was finally over, and Thor had dissolved into a puff of shadow essence, Minako retrieved the double key from the ground where it had fallen.

"Two down, two to go!" announced Yosuke triumphantly. "I think we're starting to get the hang of this!"

Minako tried to smile, but even as the thrill of victory faded away, she knew that every step they took towards the solution to the mystery of Yu's death was one step closer to the end for her. Junpei obviously knew it too, and he caught her eye as they all trekked back together through his and Chie's nightmare world. Minako looked away as soon as she met his gaze. She didn't want him to try to talk to her about it. After all, there wasn't anything left to say.

"There was no back up again," observed Chie, interrupting Minako's increasingly gloomy train of thought. "I was kinda hoping that Rise and Fuuka-san would figure it out by now."

Sure enough, the moment Minako stepped back into the Velvet Room, she found Rise in tears, and Fuuka looking vaguely annoyed, with the various party members clustered around them, looking worried.

"Hey, what's this all about?" asked Yosuke, hurrying to Rise's side. Rise didn't say anything. Instead hse sniffled and pointed at Fuuka.

"No luck, huh?" asked Minako. Fuuka just shook her head regretfully.

"Listen," began Yosuke, "how about we try taking turns being the support? If only one of you uses her persona, then it should still work, right? So, maybe, Rise, if you could help us out sometimes, and Fuuka-san, if you could take the other-!"

"No way!" Rise cut him off angrily. "That's way too risky. "What if she messes it up? You could get really hurt!"

"I'm afraid that I feel the same way," admitted Fuuka. "I'm not confident enough in Rise-chan's skills to trust her with your lives."

"My skills?" Rise was outraged. "My skills? You're the one who's causing the problem here!"

"Oookay," Junpei was stepped in between the two of them and held his arms out placatingly. "Look, let's change the subject for a second. Yosuke, man, I'm not going to be able to go inside the TV tomorrow. I've gotta work. Daidara-san is gonna be pretty pissed off about my taking the whole day today without even calling in sick."

Yosuke nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so, we'll count you out this time. Next time, though, you-!"

"But if I'm not going in," continued Junpei, "then Mina-tan's not going either.

Minako bristled, and glared at him, but Junpei didn't seem to notice. He had no right, she thought, to tell her where she was or was not going. After all, she may have been staying at his house, she may have even owed him a few favors, but that didn't give him the right to dictate her movements. She wasn't a child, although, she had to admit, looking around at the others, she was the youngest person in the room.

Even as Minako was trying to think of a witty, biting comeback, however, Yosuke spoke up. "Yeah, that's fine. Actually, there's somebody I want Minako-chan to meet, tomorrow, so…why don't we all use the day to get some things done. We'll meet back here the day after tomorrow, so that's…Wednesday. Let's say Wednesday at 1:00."

"Someone you want me to meet? Who?" asked Minako.

Yosuke shook his head. "You'll see," he told her. "I'll pick you up from Junpei's place tomorrow. Not sure when, so I have to make a phone call."

Everyone seemed to agree to the plan, and, in fact, several people looked relieved as both the SEES members and the investigation team filed back out of the Velvet Room, and then out of the TV entirely. Minako hunted around in the crowd until she found Junpei, determined to have some harsh with words with him about inappropriately ordering her around.

"Hey," she began, "it's not okay for you to-!"

"Nothing's gonna happen to you while I'm not there to stop it," he said seriously. Minako went silent.

You know, she thought, you can't protect me forever, Junpei. The blow is going to fall, ther's nothing that we can do about it now. Still, somehow, she didn't have anything that she wanted to tell him anymore. Instead, she wandered off to talk to Yukari.

The two parties agreed that, after only one night sleeping on the floor or in the cars outside at Junpei's place, that arrangement was not going to work. Yukari claimed to have woken up so stiff and sore that she'd been glad when she hadn't needed to use her persona, because she really wasn't sure she would be able to. Other people added their voices to the torrent of complaints, until finally Mitsuru and Akihiko again agreed to shell out for a set of rooms at the Amagi Inn. There were cheers and sighs of relief when everyone heard that, and Minako wondered idly when her friends had turned into such a pack of wimps.

They drove straight from Junes over to the inn, and the manager there was, or at least pretended to be delighted to see them back for a second night. Yosuke's friend with the long dark hair, Minako discovered, was named Yukiko Amagi, and was actually the daughter of the manager. It seemed that she had already mentioned to her mother than the group might be returning that evening, so that everything was already prepared for their stay, and the parties separated into small groups or pairs to drift off in the directions of each of their rooms.

Minako's heart began pounding a bit faster when she realized that she and Shinjiro were the only ones left standing by the front desk. She knew that Yukari would have saved a place for her, and would be expecting her to show up for the girls' night that they hadn't managed to have the last time they'd stayed. Really, Minako thought, she ought to go, and yet…Yosuke had interrupted her and Shinjiro when they'd been, well…rediscovering each other earlier that day. Maybe now was the time for them to take up where they had left off.

"Shinji," she began, "can I come to-!"

"No." He cut her off, shaking his head firmly, and Minako blinked at him in surprise. Seeing the slightly hurt look on her face, Shinjiro put a hand on her shoulder, and said, more gently this time, "No. Not tonight. Listen, we…" He said, and then laughed a low, deprecating laugh. "Jeez, I never know how to say this stuff. Here, come with me for a bit."

Shinjiro led Minako across the hall, and then down a flight of steps into what appeared to be the inn's kitchens. They were beautiful kitchens, well stocked and studiously cleaned, unlike the one at Junpei's house, which had counters and sinks still caked with leftover pieces of dried ramen, and, unexpectedly, banana peels.

"Are we supposed to be here?" asked Minako warily. "It looks like everyone has gone home for the night. I don't think the staff would like it if they knew that we were snooping around in here."

"Nah, it's all right. I talked to that Amagi girl about it," Shinjiro assured her. "She liked the idea, so she said that I could use the place and that she'd cover for me later."

Still not sure exactly what was going on, Minako gave him a questioning look. Shinjiro frowned, and sat down on a nearby stool, gesturing for her to come and take one as well.

"Back at Gekkou," he began slowly, obviously taking care to choose his words, "we didn't have…a lot of time. Every time you and I were together, we were either eating cheap ramen after hours in some fast food joint, or spending the night in my room. Hell, even now, ever since you came back most of the stuff we've done together has been…well, pretty physical."

Shinjiro looked away from her, and Minako felt herself blushing at the memories she had of him since she'd returned from the seal. They all seemed to be of confusing, interrupted embraces.

"I'm not Aki," Shinjiro was saying. "I know I say that a lot, but…I want you to know, I'm not good at this stuff. I've, uh…actually never had a girlfriend."

Minako's eyes opened wide. "Wait, never?"

Shinjiro blinked, and then his face flushed to match Minako's. "What? No! I mean, I've been with women. I've…had girls in my room before, like that, you know?" That didn't' seem to make it any better, and Shinjiro sighed in embarrassed exasperation.

"What I'm trying to say," he insisted, "is that I've never been good at the hand-holding and the lovey dovey stuff. I have no idea what girls like. I don't know where the nice places are to eat, and I don't usually care, but…with you, it's different. If we're gonna do this, then let's do it right."

"Shinji," said Minako, but then she wasn't sure what to say next. There was something so touching about the aggravated look on Shinjiro's face.

"So," he finished, nodding over at a set of kitchen utensils that were still laid out on the table, "I thought I'd make dinner. Just…for you and me. How's that sound?"

Minako smiled. "I'd like that," she said.

"

**Chapter Twenty**

**Author's Note: **Honestly, I came home last night after what can only be described as a grueling full day in the theater, and was absolutely delighted to see all the great and considerate feedback you all sent me! It made my whole day better, thank you for taking the time!

Oh, and look! We've already cleared the "bad ending," and are now moving toward the "normal ending!" Fantastic! Oh, and I misspoke earlier, by the way. I accidentally said that I'll post the true ending if we have between 90 and 100 reviews, but I definitely meant between 80 and 100. Wow, now there are even typos in my author's notes…good grief.

Okay, I readily confess that this next chapter is mostly gratuitous fluff, but poor Minako needs a break from all the stress. I promise to return to your regularly scheduled angstfest ASAP! Actually, I have my first day off in AGES tomorrow, so Inauguration Monday might end up being a day for a double update!

**Chapter Twenty**

Shinjiro began pulling various food products out of his sack, apparently having come prepared.  
"Should have asked what you wanted to eat," he told her apologetically. "Then it wouldn't have been a surprise, though."

"I'm not picky," Minako insisted. "Honestly, I'm sure that anything you make will be delicious."

That seemed to please Shinjiro, who grinned at the compliment. "I wouldn't be too sure about that," he said. "It's been a while since I've cooked for anyone but myself."

"Here, I'll help." Rolling up her sleeves, Minako came over and rested her elbows on the table. Shinjiro's hand brushed briefly against hers as he reached across her to get a knife, and for some reason when he drew his hand away again, his face seemed to have reddened slightly. Minako felt the skin on her hand prickling excitedly where Shinjiro had touched her.

"If you want," he muttered, "you can wash those potatoes."

Minako brought the potatoes over to the sink. As she dutifully rinsed them off, she could hear the sound of Shinjiro's knife making neat, precise little clacking sounds against the cutting board. Glancing over her shoulder, she was amused by the very concentrated look on his face as he carefully diced an tomato.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, without even looking up.

Minako blinked. "What? But, how do you-?"

"It's distracting, knowing that you're staring." Shinjiro laid the tiny pieces of tomato to one side, and reached out for the potatoes, which Minako passed over to him.

I can't help it, she thought. Shinjiro may not have been a conventionally good looking guy, but there was something very attractive about the way he was focusing so intently on the task at hand. He really did have such wonderful, piercing eyes. If only he would smile a little more, and scowl a little less.

"Well? Got something on your mind?" Shinjiro put the knife down and looked up at her. Minako bit her lip.

"Oh, um, it's nothing," she said hurriedly. "What can I do next?"

Under Shinjiro's direction, Minako began to slice vegetables and prepare the greens for a side salad. She was no great cook, and had very little experience wielding a knife. Most of what she'd done in the kitchen had happened while she'd been trying to fix Fuuka's tragic mistakes. Compared to Shinjiro's deft, practiced movements, Minako felt that she was slow and clumsy with the kitchen tools, but she followed instruction well, and before long had a nice, green salad that she was proud to display. Shinjiro cast a critical eye over it.

"Fine," he said. "Thank you."

It wasn't exactly praise, but Minako tried not to be disappointed. After all, Shinjiro wasn't a particularly demonstrative guy, and for him 'fine' was a fairly impressive distinction.

Shinjiro may have claimed to be unsophisticated, and not to be aware of what kind of things women liked, but for all of that he was surprisingly good at preparing a romantic looking dinner. There was fettuccine pasta, sprinkled with basil and red stuff that was probably the very finely diced tomatoes that Shinjiro had been working on shortly before. There was also, next to the pasta bowl, and plate full of what looked to Minako like little doughy balls, filled with something the nature of which she couldn't guess.

"It's gnocchi," muttered Shinjiro, when he saw her staring at it. "It's got potato in it. Gnocchi's an Italian thing. You put it on the pasta." Glancing critically down at the spread, he added, "sorry, it's vegetarian. I hate vegetarian food, but…it's hard to carry meat around with you, it doesn't keep. I had to improvise."

Minako stared at him."You're not seriously apologizing for this, are you?"

Together, they pushed a chair and a stool around to either end of the table they'd been working at, cleared off the debris of cooking, and settled down to heat.

"Thanks for the food," said Minako enthusiastically.

Shinjiro smiled. "Heh, yeah. You look pretty happy. I bet you haven't been eating right the last couple of days."

Minako could not remember exactly what she'd eaten over the past few days, other than a really terrible and highly recommended piece of grilled steak at Junes. That didn't matter. The food looked wonderful, but there was more to it than that.

"That's not it," insisted Minako.

Shinjiro raised an eyebrow at her.

"I'm happy that you took the time to make this for me," she said, and then, corrected herself to say "for us, I mean. This is really sweet." Not sure of how this would go over, but determined to make the effort, Minako reached out across the table and covered his hand with hers.

Shinjiro stared very hard at his plate, and said, more gruffly than usual, "Go on, it'll get cold if you don't eat." Minako smiled to herself.

They ate together for a few minutes in companionable silence. Everything tasted absolutely perfect, and Minako knew that she was eating more than she should. She'd have to spend some time running around and exercising the next day, to make sure she burned off the extra calories. The idea of asking Akihiko to work out with her passed briefly through her mind, and she winced involuntarily, knowing that she couldn't do that anymore. Once, that would have been the highlight of her day, but now…

"What's wrong?" asked Shinjiro, and Minako silently cursed her really terrible poker face. "Something not taste good?"

"No, no, everything's great! It's just…" she fumbled for something to say. Under no circumstance, she thought, can I tell him that I was thinking of Aki. He's sensitive enough about that stuff as it is.

Before she had a chance to come up with a reasonable excuse, however, Shinjiro spoke up again. "It's what I said yesterday, huh? You still worried about that?"

Minako had no idea what he was talking about. "Um. Yes?" She said, hoping for the best.

Shinjiro nodded. "I figured you'd ask me about that." He sighed. "Okay. Listen, it was just two girls. Um, I mean, two different girls, not at the same time. One was Aki's friend. He had me take her home one night when she'd been drinking and…well, in the morning I left, and I didn't call her again. The other was this chick at the store. I wasn't even that interested, but it had been a long time, and…ugh." He shook his head. "I don't really want to talk about it. Is that enough?"

Minako was surprised. "Oh, um, yes! Right! That's fine, thank you for telling me." Honestly, she had to admit to herself, she hadn't even thought about it. When Shinjiro had said that he'd been with other women, for some reason it hadn't even registered with her. That didn't make a lot of sense. After all, she'd been terribly disappointed to find out that Aki had seen other girls while the two of them had been apart. Why didn't it bother her in this case?

Probably, came that wise little voice in the back of her mind, it's because you know just how much Shinjiro cares for you. You knew that almost as soon as he looked at you on your first day back. Those poor girls had probably been pretty disappointed to find out that Shinjiro was so hung up on a dead ex-lover. No girl wanted to hear that she had to compete with fond memories of the dearly departed.

"You never called her again?" Minako asked teasingly. "You're kind of a jerk, Shinji."

"What? What kind of a thing is that to say to a guy?" he asked, but he looked relieved. "Anyway, that stuff doesn't matter. I told you, there isn't anybody else. Now finish your salad."

Minako didn't just finish her salad, she finished everything on her plate. Looking up at Shinjiro to thank him once again for the excellent dinner, she watched a shudder pass through his body, making him drop his fork back on to the plate.

"You're still not feeling well?" she asked, concerned.  
"Forget it, it's just some stupid cold," he promised her, but Minako was aware now that the flush around his cheeks might not be entirely from embarrassment. Without thinking about it, she stood up, crossed to the other side of the table, and placed her hand against his forehead.

"Hey, quit that," he snarled at her, but she ignored him.

"You're feverish," she told him. "And it's late. You should be getting to bed."

Shinjiro glared at her. "Don't act like my mom," he said. "I can't tell you how weird that is."

Minako began clearing plates off the table, and taking them to the sink to wash. Despite her admonitions, Shinjiro got up and helped her clean the plates and dishes.

As they stood side by side, their hands immersed in soapy water, Minako asked, as casually as she could manage, "You're not still taking that stuff, are you?"

"Huh? What stuff?" Shinjiro looked at her. "Oh, you mean, the pills I was on in high school. The ones that controlled my persona. You don't seriously think I'd still be doing that shit, do you? Anyway, I almost never have to use the damn persona anymore. I don't even have to control it. And if I did…"

He trailed off, and Minako stared at him. "If you did…then what?"

"Then I know I could," he finished. "I've got plenty of reasons."

Minako let it go. It was enough for her, for the moment, that Shinjiro was off of the drugs, and she didn't want to harass him while he clearly wasn't feeling at his best. Then again, she reminded herself, he'd been sick since she'd arrived, or at least since he'd run after her that night at Junpei's place. Was it really only a cold, or had he been lying to her the whole time? Wouldn't he do something like that, to keep her from finding out, to 'protect' her from the truth?

The plate she was washing slipped out of her hands and clattered against the bottom of the sink. Shinjiro picked it up, looked at it for a moment, then put it back and turned to Minako.

"Hey," he said. "It's okay." Wiping one hand against his jeans to dry it, he reached over and brushed some stray hair out from in front of Minako's face, then leaned in and kissed her.

It wasn't like the kisses he'd given her before, urgent and intense. This was a very careful, almost tentative kiss, and as Minako relaxed herself into it, she felt him place his other hand steadyingly against her upper back, as though she might fall backwards and shatter like a fragile piece of dishware.

They stayed together like that for several long moments, and when Shinjiro finally broke away, Minako knew that the color in his face had nothing to do with fever.

"It's late," he muttered. "I'll finish up here. You should get to bed."

That's true, thought Minako. Yosuke had something planned for her tomorrow, and she had no idea what that was going to be all about. She wasn't tired, not at all, but that was probably just the excitement lingering on from the kiss, and the romantic evening.

"You should too," she said. "You're sick."

"Yeah, I will," he promised, nodding. "Won't take long down here."

Minako began walking towards the steps that would lead back up to the main floor of the inn. Before she started climbing, she turned back again to find Shinjiro watching her, the plate still dangling unheeded from his hands.

"Thank you, Shinji," she said, feeling like she couldn't possibly have found anything lamer to say. "Goodnight."

"Night," she heard him reply as she set off to look, belatedly, for Yukari's bedroom.

**Chapter Twenty One**

**Author's Note:**

**ScarletApples! **You write me such wonderful, encouraging, thoughtful reviews, and yet I can't respond to you properly, because you are always a "guest!" Thank you for reading and taking the time to review! You asked a question about whether or not we are going to see Koromaru, and honestly…I am not a dog person. I do not know how to write stories about dogs. Dogs…do not interest me. However, because you and several other people have asked, I'll have him make an appearance in a few chapters, and I'll do my best to write him well. See, I'm a reasonable person!

So, **Maudlin Blase **mentioned that she listens to persona music when she's reading fanfic. That got me thinking, I have some music that I listen to while I'm writing this story, to help keep me in the right mood. I thought I'd list a few of the tracks in case you all want some cool new music to listen to while you read.

AWOLNATION – Kill Your Heroes

Sarah Maclachlan – I Will Not Forget You (not to be confused with "I Will Remember You")

David Gray – Nemesis

Florence + The Machine – Rabbit Heart

Muse – Time is Running Out

When I said yesterday that today would be a return to the usual Minako angst, I meant it. And here it is.

**Chapter Twenty One**

Minako could not sleep in the next morning. She carefully got out bed, tiptoed past the still sleeping Yukari, and slipped out the door, hoping to get a chance to talk to Shinjiro before everyone else was wok up. She hadn't been able to stop thinking about him all night, and sleeping had been difficult for her while she'd been so eager to see him again.

Before she had made it even four paces down the hallway towards Shinjiro and Ken's room, however, Minako was disappointed to find that she wasn't the only person around who had managed to get up early. Yosuke, who must have convinced Yukiko to let him in before check-out even started, came walking towards her , and there wasn't time for her to find a place to hide in which to avoid him.

"Morning," he said. "Hey, you're up early. Ready to go?"

Go away, thought Minako. "Good morning," she said instead. "Um, where are we going?"

Yosuke turned around and began walking back towards the inn's entrance. Minako, albeit reluctantly, tagged along behind him. "You'll see," he told her. "Don't worry, I'm not taking you anywhere dangerous. There's just something that I think you need to see. Trust me, it'll make sense when we get there."

Well, thought Minako, he probably isn't going to kill me. If he does, then he may never see his friend again, and he definitely knows that by now, so how bad can this possibly be?

They got into Yosuke's car, and he drove them away from the inn, towards a quiet neighborhood not too different from Junpei's own. Minako begin to get an inexplicably bad feeling about this little trip when Yosuke stopped the car in front of a one-family home with a scooter parked out front, and a little, hand-made garden visible around the side of the house.

"This is Narukami's house, isn't it?" Minako asked, unsure of just exactly how she knew that.

"Actually," admitted Yosuke, "Yu lives in the city. This is his uncle's place."

"Why did you bring me here?" Minako began, but almost before she finished speaking, the front door opened, and a little girl came running out, calling to Yosuke. The girl had on a pink dress covered by a pretty white sweater, and long brown hair that bounced around her shoulders as she hurried towards them.

Yosuke opened the door and got out of the car, intercepting the little girl as she gave him a big, friendly hug. "Nanako-chan," he said, and Minako was somewhat surprised to see the affectionate smile light up his face. Up until this moment, most of what she had seen of Yosuke had been either determined and harsh, or mocking and unsympathetic. That, of course, probably stemmed from his grief and concern over the loss of his best friend. Still, Minako hadn't really expected him to be fond of children.

"Dad's not home right now," said Nanako. "He's at work on…on that case." She bit her lip, and tears began welling up in her eyes. Angrily, she brushed them away.

"It's okay," Yosuke assured her. "I don't mind."

"No," insisted Nanako fiercely. "I'm not gonna cry. I'm eight years old now, I don't have to cry. Big Bro wouldn't like me to cry."

In the forcedly stoic expression on Nanako's face, Minako recognized something that she knew she'd felt so many times before, while trying to put a brave face on for the rest of the party, or when attempting to convince herself that, contrary to all evidence, things were really going to turn out all right. It was terrifying to see that same expression on the face of an eight year old. Children that age were supposed to be carefree and unhindered by that sort of grief.

"Nanako-chan," said Yosuke gently, "I want you to meet someone. This is Minako. She's….she's a friend of your cousin's from the city."

"Oh." For the first time, Nanako looked up at Minako, and tried to smile. "You know Big Bro?"

Minako didn't know what to say. "Yes, I…" she managed, then stopped, and decided instead on the slightly less mendacious phrase, "He and I have a lot in common."

Nanako gave her a genuinely welcoming smile. "Then…I'm pleased to meet you." She bobbed a polite little bow. "If Big Bro likes you, you must be a nice person. All of his friends are always nice people. Um…would you like to come in?"

They went inside the house, and Nanako encouraged them to sit down around the table. "Would you like some coffee?" she asked. "Normally dad is the one who makes the coffee, but…he hasn't been feeling very well lately, so I guess now I'm old enough to do it." She said it with a mixture of childish pride and wistfulness in her voice, and again, Minako felt a stab of guilt that she knew she didn't really deserve.

"I hate you," she muttered under her breath to Yosuke, just softly enough that Nanako couldn't hear.

Yosuke feigned innocence. "Huh? What's that for?" he asked. His poker face wasn't really much better than hers, Minako thought.

"How's Teddie?" asked Nanako, as she busied herself with the coffee pot. She had to get a stool, Minako noticed, so that she could reach all of the various kitchen implements she needed.

"He's great," Yosuke told her. "He's pretty busy with stuff at Junes right now, but he misses you. I'll bring him over soon, okay? How about on Friday?"

Nanako and Yosuke chatted for a while about friends, school, and all of the other day-to-day things that people make small talk about. While they talked, Minako sipped her coffee and took a quick look around at the room she was sitting in. It was set up for three, with a sofa sitting next to a mismatched armchair over by the television set. The armchair, which so clearly had been purchased separately from the rest of the living room set, looked old, but comfortable. Perhaps, thought Minako, it came from a thrift store or local garage sale. It was the sort of thing people added to the living room at the last minute, when a guest came to stay, or there was a sudden and unexpected new addition to the household.

The walls of the room were also covered in photographs, many of which depicted, in some form or other, Nanako and an older, grizzled looking man in a police uniform. Some of the pictures also showed a beautiful woman, presumably Nanako's mother, while others showed Yu Narukami smiling in the mother's place. There were also hand-done drawings of the same groups of people, presumably made by Nanako, who even Minako had to admit was more skilled with a crayon than the average eight year old.

So this is what it looks like to be a family, said the little voice in the back of Minako's mind. She stood up and walked over to one of the drawings so that she could examine it more closely. Once she was up close, Minako could see that the two figures of Narukami and Nanako were holding hands. There was a big yellow sun in the background, and every person in the picture was wearing an open-mouthed smile.

"My teacher says that I'm good at art," said Nanako, coming over to join Minako by the wall. "Oh, here's your coffee. Sorry it took so long, um…I'll practice more so I get faster at making it."

"No, it's perfect, thank you," Minako insisted. "Your teacher's right, this is a beautiful picture. I like how everyone in it seems to be so happy."

"Thanks!' Nanako seemed proud of her work. "We are very happy!"

We are, thought Minako. She's still using the present tense. Shooting a glance over to the table, Minako saw that Yosuke was watching her. Suddenly, she decided that she'd had enough.

"It was so nice to meet you, Nanako-chan. I'm sorry, but Yosuke and I have to go now," she said.

"Oh, all right…" Nanako looked disappointed. "Will you come again? I want…to talk about Big Bro. Is that okay?"

There was absolutely no way that Minako could possibly refuse. "Of course I will," she promised. "I'll come soon, and we'll have lots of time to talk, okay?" Minako was surprised to realize that she meant every word of it.

"Next time," added Yosuke, "we'll come pick you up, and we'll all go to Junes together. Teddie, Chie, Yukiko, and everyone will be really glad to see you."

"Yeah," agreed Nanako, her face brightening slightly. "Don't forget, okay?"

Nanako waved goodbye from the doorway as Minako and Yosuke drove off in the car. Yosuke kept his eyes on the road, but Minako knew that he was waiting for her to say something.

"You don't understand," she told him. "You didn't have to do that."

"Do what?" he asked.

Minako could feel the anger welling up inside her, and for once she didn't try to keep a lid on it. "Shut up!" she railed at him. "Stop acting like you don't know what I'm talking about. I'm not an idiot, okay? Neither are you. You brought me here because you wanted me to see how much hurt I had caused, right? You wanted me to see how sad Nanako was, how I'd broken up some poor guy's family. That's why we came here. I dare you to tell me that I'm wrong."

Yosuke didn't anything.

"What you don't get," continued Minako, deciding to let it all out now that she was on a roll, "is that you don't have to do stuff like this. I'm not trying to get out of it, okay? I'm not trying to run away. You can show me a hundred people, all of whom were hurt by Narukami's death, and it won't change my mind even a little bit. It doesn't have to, okay? I said I was going to see this through, and that's what I'm going to do, so knock it off with the guilt trips. You can't make this any better by trying to make it hurt me more. That won't bring him back any faster."

Yosuke cleared his throat. "Yeah," he said. "I'm sorry. It's not..I just wanted you to see what it looks like when you lose someone you care about, that's all. I'm not trying to make you feel guilty."

"Liar," said Minako.

"No, I'm not," he insisted. "I just know it's hard to think about how somebody else must feel. I mean, sometimes it's hard for me to imagine how Dojima and Nanako are feeling, losing their family like that. He was my partner, and I…but to them, he was family."

They drove along in silence for a few moments, before Minako said. "I don't have to imagine. I know what it feels like. My parents died when I was six."

"Oh." Yosuke sounded genuinely taken aback. "I…I didn't know that."

"Well," muttered Minako, settling back in the seat and turning away from him. "Now you do."

**Chapter Twenty Two**

**Author's Note: **Here is today's second update! Might we even be able to fit three updates in today? Honestly, I do not know, it will depend on how long it takes me to finish the long-awaited vacuuming of my entire house. No reason not to be optimistic, though, right?

There's…well, um, this one has more angst in it. I'm sure you're absolutely shocked by that. Anyway, the chapter after this one takes us back to the TV world, hooray! Just bear with the angst for a few more pages and then we can destroy shadows again. I promise.

**Chapter Twenty Two**

"I'm sorry," said Yosuke, as they continued driving back in the direction of Junpei's house. "Um…do you want to talk about it?"

Minako stared at him blankly. There was no way, she thought, that he had seriously just said those words out loud."No," she said firmly, when it was clear that Yosuke was honestly waiting for an answer to his question. "No, I do not want to 'talk about it.' It was ten years ago." Actually, she realized, it was probably thirteen years ago, if she counted the ones during which she was dead. "It has been a very long time since I have needed to 'talk about it.'"

That, of course, was a lie, of sorts. One never, Minako knew, entirely got over the loss of one's parents. Still, she hated that incredibly awkward, condescending question.

"What I'm saying is," she continued, carefully steering the conversation back on to the intended track, "that you don't know anything about me. Don't make assumptions about what I know, or about who I am. I'm not doing this for you, anyway."

That begged the question, Minako realized as Yosuke drove on in contemplative silence, who exactly was she doing it for?

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke. "Like I said, I'm sorry. I screwed up."

This conversation felt a bit to Minako like various squabbles she'd had with classmates in middle school, all of which seemed to have ended with something that resembled the phrase "nobody understands me." It was frankly a bit immature, and she wasn't sure if that was her fault or Yosuke's fault. What was really bizarre was that they were having one of the most immature conversations in her recent memory about a life or death situation, which would, quite literally, end in life for one person and death for another. It was alarmingly surreal. She couldn't help it. She laughed out loud, but it wasn't a happy sort of laugh.

Yosuke stared at her. "You okay?" he asked, clearly feeling that she wasn't.

"No. Maybe." Minako shrugged. She felt a little lightheaded. Maybe she was thinking too much.

"Yeah. Okay." Yosuke nodded slowly. "Um. You want to stop for some lunch?"

"Yes," said Minako. "Yes, fine." After a moment's consideration, she added, "but not at Junes." There were always so many people at Junes that she knew she'd end up running into one of her friends, or one of Yosuke's friends, many of whom seemed to be even more clueless than he was. Right now, all she wanted was to be alone. Not alone with Yosuke, just alone, but she'd take whatever she could reasonably get at this point.

They pulled over in front of a very colorful place in the shopping district, with a sign that read "Chinese Diner Aiya." Yosuke, who seemed to really be feeling badly about the guilt thing with Nanako, came around to Minako's side of the car, and opened the door for her. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Um, do you eat Chinese food?" he asked.

Minako almost said, "I'll eat it if you're paying," but decided not to at the last minute. Yosuke did look pretty remorseful, and, besides, when she really thought about it, she had to admit that there was no way he could have known about her parents.

"Yeah, that sounds great," she said. They went into the diner together.

When they were both sitting down, and Minako was happily munching her way through some beef fried rice, Yosuke cleared his throat again and said, "I don't really know how to deal with this."

"Hmm?" asked Minako, looking up. "You might want to start by trying chopsticks."

"No," muttered Yosuke, not even taking the time to glare at her. "I mean, this thing with…with Yu. And, with you. I thought that I'd been up against the scariest stuff there was out there, back when we all solved those cases inside the TV world. But now I have to bring my best friend back from the dead, and…"

You're never exactly going to know how to deal with it, thought Minako. It's never going to be something that you get used to.

"You've been dead," finished Yosuke. "What's that like?"

"Um." Minako blinked at him. She didn't have an answer to that. She didn't actually remember the whole 'being dead' part. She remembered the dying, and the coming back to life, but the stuff in between was just…it was nothing. It was a lack of existence. That's what death really was, and somehow, she didn't think that he, or anyone else for that matter, was really going to want to hear that.

"Did it hurt?" he pressed her.

She relented a little, seeing the genuine frustration in his eyes. "No," she promised him, "it didn't hurt. Not at all."

"Oh, that's good." Yosuke nodded to himself as though he'd understood something, even though Minako wasn't sure exactly what it was. "I don't want him to…to be in any pain, you know?"

Up until that moment, Minako really hadn't known. If he hadn't asked that question, maybe she never would have. Out of all the innumerable questions that he probably had bout life, death, and shadows, however, Yosuke had chosen to ask about the pain. He really, sincerely cared about Yu, in a way that Minako wished more people in the world cared about each other. If people made a habit of really feeling about each other the way that Yosuke clearly did about Yu, maybe there would have been fewer shadows to deal with. Yosuke's heart was a lot more genuine that Minako had ever taken the time to realize.

"He's my best friend," Yosuke pleaded. He wasn't the sort of guy who usually did anything that could be interpreted as "pleading," and Minako sighed. She had a best friend too, and right now she didn't even want to imagine the way that her death was going to break Junpei's heart. Somehow, even if it was the second time around, Minako doubted that it was going to hurt less.

"We're going to get him back," she promised, and patted Yosuke comfortingly on the hand. That seemed a little strange, seeing as he was a full year older than she was, but Yosuke didn't appear to mind.

"Wow," he said, with a nervous little laugh. "This conversation is something else. I wonder what the people at the other tables must be thinking. I bet they can hear us."

"They probably think that we're insane." Minako shrugged. "Now that right there, that's something that you'll get used to."

Before heading back to the house, Yosuke and Minako drove over to Daidara's shop, where they found Junpei working behind the counter.

Sup," he said, eyeing Yosuke warily the moment they walked in. "Everything go okay on your secret mission?"

Junpei caught Minako's eye significantly, and she hastened to reassure him. "Everything's fine," she insisted. Junpei visibly relaxed.

"So," he began again, in a more cheerful, businesslike tone of voice, "what can I get you guys today? We've got the very finest in armor and weaponry that you'll find anywhere in Inaba. Can I interest the lovely lady in a new naginata? Or maybe…" Darting away for a moment, Junpei rummaged around in some trunks behind the counter, coming back with a beautifully hand-crafted chainmail shirt. He held it up to his chest, and struck an exaggeratedly valiant pose. "Check it out, Mina-tan! I'm your knight in shining armor!"

Minako laughed.

She, Junpei, and Yosuke spent a long time looking around Daidara's shop, poking at this and that, swinging swords and knives around, and generally behaving inappropriately with what were really very valuable and well-crafted pieces of artwork. Daidara himself, Junpei told them, had stepped out for a lunch break, andJunpei assured his friends that the old man was the sort to take forever over his food.

"Hey, what about this, huh?" Junpei held up what appeared to be an armor bikini, studded and spangled with various unnecessarily shiny touches. "I bet Shinjiro-san would be speechless if he saw you in this. Not that he usually says that much anyway. He'd love it, right?"

Minako went bright red. "That's enough of that," she insisted, snatching the bikini out of Junpei's outstretched hands and laying it carefully and distastefully aside. "How could something like that be considered 'art?'"

"Oh, I know some girls who'd look like a real work of art wearing that, right Yosuke-kun?" Junpei leered at her. "Come on; don't knock it if you've never tried it!"

"Don't drag me into this," said Yosuke, shaking his head. "Your creepy kinks aren't anything that I want to know about."

In the end, Minako made some purchases, mostly of useful accessories, and of a pair of sturdier looking boots to help with long stretches inside the TV world. After he got off work, Junpei, Yosuke, and Minako all drove back together to Junpei's house.

Everybody else was already there, hanging out on the couch, watching television, eating Fuuka's dubious attempts at snack foods. It looked to Minako as though it would be another long night curled up on the floor, unless Mitsuru and Akihiko were planning to pay, yet again, for the inn. There had, she thought, to be a better long-term solution to the problem of sleeping arrangements. After all, even Mitsuru wasn't actually made of money.

Then again, she told herself, forcing herself, there didn't really need to be a long term solution. At least, not for her. When she finally finished her mission, no doubt the others would go home, back to the lives they had broken off when Junpei had called them over only a few days before. She expected that thought to hurt, the way it always did, but…this time, Minako somehow felt as though that was the way it should be.

"Hey, Minako-chan! You're back!" Yukari hailed her from the depths of the sofa. Minako hurried over to join her.

"Hey," Junpei was asking Yosuke, "you want to come in for a bit? I promise, Fuuka's cooking will not actually kill you. I think."

Yosuke glanced at Minako, and opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again, bit his lip, and shook his head. "Nah," he said, "um, thanks, but…I have to get going."

Minako watched the door close behind Yosuke. Just for a moment or two, she thought she saw him standing in the middle of the street, with his hands in his pockets, staring over his shoulder at the house, before he got back into his car and drove off into the night.

**An hour later, at the Dojima residence…**

Nanako opened the door to find Yosuke standing on the front step for the second time that day. "Yosuke!" she said, a delighted smile breaking over her face, "you're back! Yay! Did you forget something?"

"No, I didn't forget anything, I just…" Yosuke frowned. "Can I come in?"

"Of course!" Nanako jumped aside to make room for Yosuke. "Sorry, dad's still at work. He said that he'll be home really late."

"Oh, yeah?" asked Yosuke. "Well, maybe you and I can hang out together until he gets home."

Nanako beamed at him. "Okay!" Looking past him through the open door, she asked, "Did Minako have to go home to her mom and dad tonight? Did you get lonely?"

Yosuke laughed darkly. Minako did sort of have to go home to her mom and dad, in a manner of speaking. There was something grotesquely amusing about that, in a way that he didn't like at all. "Yeah," he said, "something like that. She's nice, isn't she?"

Nanako nodded. "Mmm-hmm. Ooh, we have sodas that dad got from Junes. Do you want one?"

Nanako went to the fridge to get each of them a soda. While she was busy in the kitchen, Yosuke went over to examine the same drawing that he'd caught Minako looking at. The drawing had Dojima standing protectively over a slightly too-tall Nanako and a Yu with a big heart on his t-shirt. Yu and Nanako were holding hands, and everyone was smiling almost manically up into Yosuke's face.

Yosuke tried to smile back at him, but inside, he felt a little queasy.

**Chapter Twenty Three**

**Author's Note: **Whoa, three updates in one day…

So, everybody knows that today is the inauguration, right? Well, public transportation in DC is basically unusable today, so I haven't even left the house. It wouldn't have been worth it to try getting on the metro. I didn't have work at either of my jobs, my classes were canceled, I couldn't run any of my errands, I did my vacuuming, my laundry, sent all of the necessary emails, worked heavily on my lines for two different shows, did my roommate's dishes, took a nap, called my boyfriend…and now it's only 9:33. It's…honestly a little disturbing.

I guess I'd better do another update. It may be years before I see a day like this one again!

**Chapter Twenty Three**

Ouch. That was the first thought that passed through Minako's gradually waking mind as she peeled herself off the floor of Junpei's house the next morning. Next to her, Yukari was curled up in what looked like an unnecessarily contorted version of the fetal position, and Fuuka was splayed out on her back with her arms and legs making the shape of some kind of demented starfish. Minako wondered with some amusement if the other girls knew what they looked like when they slept.

Shinjiro was sleeping several feet away from her, lying on his side with both hands clenched into fists. As quietly as she could, Minako tiptoed over snoring bodies until she reached him, then knelt down beside him and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.

Almost as soon as she touched him, however, his hand shot out and grabbed her by the back of the neck. Minako shrieked, and Shinjiro shot upright, one hand already in his pocket for his evoker. The two of them froze for a moment, staring at each other.

"Jeez," muttered Shinjrio, immediately letting go of Minako. She began massaging the place on her neck where his fingers had dug into her skin. "Don't do shit like that. Did I hurt you?"

"No, I'm fine," lied Minako.

Reaching around her, Shinjiro brushed back her hair to reveal angry red finger marks across her skin. He looked horrified. "That looks pretty bad. I…you should have…here, let me get you a-!"

"Honestly," interrupted Minako, "I'll be fine." She was embarrassed. Of course it had been a stupid idea to sneak up on Shinji. After all, hadn't he spent years hanging out with Akihiko? Akihiko had a habit of getting physical when he was angry. Shinji would, of course, be the sort of guy who was always on the alert and ready for a fight. "You've…got good reflexes," she managed.

"Yeah," agreed Shinjiro quietly. He sighed. "At least let me get you a cold towel or something."

"I've got it," said Yukari. Minako turned to see Yukari standing there, holding out a wet compress, presumably from Junpei's bathroom. She wasn't the only one, either. It looked like the commotion had women up the entire group, and now all of them were sitting around on the floor, staring at Minako and Shinjiro.

"And Yosuke said that I was into kinky stuff," murmured Junpei. "Psh, wait till I tell him about this.""

"That's not…it isnt'…I was never going to…" Minako knew that her face was bright red.

"Shut up, Stupei," said Yukari. Helping Minako to her feet, Yukari pushed the towel into her hands. "Come on, let's take a look that wound." Together, they walked off towards the bathroom, leaving the rest of the party to finish waking up.

When Minako and Yukari returned, most people were looking a bit more alive.

Akihiko intercepted Minako as she tried to walk casually past him. "Hey, you okay?" he asked.

"Fine," mumbled Minako. "Thank you."

"Sure." Akihiko glared over at Shinjiro, who glared back with equal venom. "If he gives you any trouble, you tell me. Got it?"

There were a lot of things that Minako could have said. She was just trying to figure out which one to start with when, all of a sudden, Shinjiro was in front of her, getting right up in Akihiko's face.

"What're you saying?" he asked, in a low, dangerous voice. "You saying I'd hurt her on purpose? That I'm some kind of abusive freak?"

Akihiko shrugged. "Tch. On purpose or not, who cares? You hurt her just now, didn't you?"

"Hey!" Minako pushed her body in between them, forcing Shinjiro and Akihiko both to look at her. "I said I'm fine, okay? Forget it, I was being stupid anyway."

Reluctantly, Shinjiro and Akihiko drifted off in opposite directions. From somewhere behind Minako, Junpei whistled under his breath. "Damn," he commented. "That was awkward."

Yukari stared at him incredulously. "Junpei? Seriously, shut up!"

The rest of the morning was considerably less lively. Junpei let Minako use his shower, and she changed into some of the new clothes she'd bought at Junes with money that she'd recently won from fighting shadows in the TV world. Feeling a bit more like a human being after that, she came back down the stairs to find Yosuke and his friends already lounging around by the door, apparently waiting for the members of SEES to get their act together.

"Hey," said Yosuke, nodding when Minako came into the room.

"Hey," she said. "Ready to fight some nightmares?"

For some reason, Yosuke's reply didn't sound very enthusiastic. "Yeah, sure."

Yet again, they all piled into various cars and made the drive over to Junes. Yosuke let them into the electronics department, and before too long they were all standing in front of Igor and Margaret.

"Welcome," began Igor, "to the-!"

Minako and Yosuke totally ignored him. Instead, they walked over towards the row of doors, and everyone else followed suit.

"So," asked Minako. "Who's the lucky winner today?"

It took a moment for anyone to speak. Then, Akihiko's hand shot up with a key clutched in it. "My turn," he said, and Minako saw a familiar look on his face. He had the glint in his eyes of a man who was ready and raring for a good fight. She'd seen it countless times back at Gekkoukan, when they'd been fighting shadows together. That look still excited her a little, and she worked for a few moments to fight that feeling back down while they all waited for the other key to surface.

"Here," came a voice from the very back of the group. "I've got it." Minako was genuinely surprised to see Shinjiro pushing his way forward past the rest of the members of SEES, holding the other key out for her inspection.

"But…shouldn't it be one of Yosuke's friends?" she asked.

Shinjiro shrugged. "It's not," he told her, unnecessarily. "It's me. So let's do this."

Minako looked at Akihiko and Shinjiro, who were studiously not looking at each other. Then she looked over at Yosuke, who was frantically shaking his head. She shrugged at him, and he took a deep breath.

"Maybe," he began, "you should sit this one out, Minako-chan."

"No," said Minako, "no, I have to go too."

She knew that Yosuke was worried that she, who had, admittedly, been the cause of most of the trouble between Akihiko and Shinjiro, might only make it worse once they'd gone inside the nightmare world. Yosuke had a point, and she knew it, but there was no way that she was letting Shinjiro and Akihiko go into that dangerous place without her. After all, even if they defeated all of the shadows, they still might kill each other, and she wasn't going to allow that.

"He's right," added Akihiko. "We've got this in the bag, there's no reason for you to risk it."

"I agree," muttered Shinjiro.

Minako turned her fiercest, most uncompromisingly glare on them both. "I," she said, "am going, and that is all there is to it. Are we done here?"

Akihiko didn't argue. Minako got the sense that, despite his protestation, he was kind of impressed by her insistence. Without a word, he stepped forward and inserted the key into the lock of one of the doors. Shinjiro was right behind him, and together they pulled the door open to reveal a vast room with spotless white walls. Minako could see from where she stood that the room had low metal tables and uncomfortable looking metal chairs, along with what appeared to be old, stained charts and graphs lining the walls.

"Shit," growled Shinjiro. "I thought this would happen."

"Hey," asked Yosuke, "is this…a hospital?"

Nobody moved as a nurse came into view, her uniform so pale and pristine that it almost disappeared against the unnatural whiteness of the wallpaper. Slowly, apparently without noticing the open door, she stalked across the room, and only when she briefly turned her head to look at a wall chart did Minako see that she had the yellow, menacing eyes of a shadow.

"Get back," commanded Shinjiro, and they all stepped back and held their breaths until the shadow nurse had walked off, and they could no longer hear her heels clicking h the distance.

"This," announced Akihiko "is going to suck."

There were no disagreements as the four of them walked into the nightmare hospital together.

Minako had spent plenty of time in hospitals. There had been nothing left of her parents to bring to the hospital when they'd passed away all those years ago. She' visited Akihiko there when he'd been injured once during high school, and then she'd spent a lot more time there while visiting the unconscious Shinjiro after his run in with Strega. Hospitals were full of sickness, she knew, but they were also full of hope, and full of people who were waiting for their friends and loved ones to recover. Sometimes, the best, most magical reunion moments happened in hospitals. At other times, hospitals were where people discovered that they hadn't had time to say goodbye. Minako concluded that she didn't much like hospitals. She wasn't, however, particularly afraid of them.

Shinjiro and Akihiko, on the other hand, both looked as though they expected something horrible to come at them from every crevice and every corner. Akihiko was clearly so on edge that Minako could see the veins standing out in his forehead and throat.

"So?" Shinjiro asked Akihiko as they listened to each other's footfalls on the glistening floor. "What's your excuse?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Akihiko.

Shinjiro shrugged. "I almost died in a hospital. No surprise that I don't' like them. So what about you?"

Akihiko stopped, and stared at him. "The hell?" he snarled. "I watched you almost die in a hospital, isn't that enough?"

Minako and Yosuke, in a unanimous, unspoken decision, fell back slightly and let Akihiko and Shinjiro take the lead. The two men didn't even seem to notice.

"Doctors told me every single day that I was wasting my time, that there was no way you were going to come back," Akihiko continued. "You have any idea what that's like, to be told over and over again that there's no hope and that you shouldn't bother holding out? No, you were pretty much dead, so there's no way you remember any of that. Yeah, you had it pretty easy, you were out cold. Minako and I, we had to live through it."

Shinjiro didn't say anything. Minako felt that was a wise decision, under the circumstances. Awkwardly, Yosuke cleared his throat, but didn't seem to have anything to follow that with.

"Listen, Aki," Shinjiro started to say at last.

Akihiko didn't stop. "You were going to leave me behind," he said. "That's what hospitals are, they're places where you wait to get left behind by the people you- agh!"

Suddenly, Akihiko stumbled forward, flailing his arms out as he began to fall. Shinjiro was beside him in a moment, grabbing him and pushing him back on to his feet.

"The hell?" Akihiko stared down at the ground, and tried again to take the step that he'd stumbled on the first time. His left foot carried forward, but his right foot was rooted firmly the ground. "I'm stuck."

"Stuck on what?" asked Minako, hurrying forward to join them.

"Not sure." Akihiko shook his head. "But this isn't a great time for it. Look at that."

He pointed with one hand, and Minako, Yosuke, and Shinjiro all looked up to see a white-clad shadow doctor lurching towards them, brandishing two gleaming metal scalpels each hand.

Shinjiro planted himself firmly in front of the still struggling Akihiko, and Minako and Yosuke took up positions on either side. "Get ready," said Shinjiro, dragging his evoker out of his pocket. "This could get ugly."

"

**Chapter Twenty Four**

**Author's Note: **So! You guys don't like hospitals either, huh? Certainly seems that way from the responses I've been getting!

Well, don't worry, we'll get Aki, Shinji, Yosuke and Minako out of the hospital as soon as possible. Actually, let's do that right now! Super-long chapter, here we come!

Oh, but first, a question. There's one line, and just one, in this story that I've been waiting for a chance to use for a long time. Can anyone guess which one it is?

**Chapter Twenty Four**

As Shinjiro stepped forward to engage the enemy, Minako instinctively moved to one side, closing the gap between her and Yosuke.

"Stay back," she warned him, "and pay attention."

"Why?" Yosuke look puzzled by her urgency.

Minako jerked her head in Shinjiro's direction. "Because," she said, "Shinji hasn't always had the best of luck controlling his persona. It's turned against him and the people around him before."

Yosuke's eyes went wide. "Are you serious?" he asked. "Wait, that actually happens?" Yosuke's persona came out and stood protectively in front of them both, while Yosuke himself went into a guarded stance. "But he couldn't hurt you, right? Isn't he your boyfriend?"

That's a good question, thought Minako. Actually, it was two good questions. She really didn't know if she could reasonably call herself Shinjiro's girlfriend, considering the slightly unorthodox way they'd begun their relationship on each of two separate occasions. She also had no reason to believe that he wouldn't hurt her. Of course, he'd never hurt her on purpose, but an unharnessed persona could probably do all kinds of damage, and no bonds of friendship or romance would be likely to stand in its way.

"Just…don't let your guard down," said Minako. Yosuke made a noise that sounded like a cross between a four letter word and a whimper.

Shinjiro, apparently oblivious to all this, was brandishing his axe at the approaching shadow. When the shadow was finally in striking range, Shinjiro spun the axe around in his hands, and brought the handle slamming down on the shadow's head, at the same time growling "heat wave." An inferno of magic sliced right through the shadow's body, and the shadow, caught by two attacks in as many seconds, staggered backwards.

"Get out of the way!" shouted Akihiko, and Minako pulled Yosuke to safety mere milliseconds before Akihiko's persona released a powerful lighting attack that struck the shadow through the head. Before it fell, the shadow managed to thrust out with two of the menacing scalpels, and wounded Shinjiro in the side. Even as Shinjiro sank to his knees, however, the shadow, too, fell forward on to its face, leaving it open to an all-out attack.

"Shinji!" yelled Minako, running forward to his side. He waved her away impatiently, grunting as he struggled back to his feet. "I'm fine," he muttered. "Go for the kill."

Minako, Yosuke, and a slightly staggered Shinjiro rushed forward towards the enemy. All the while, Minako was conscious of the sounds of Akihiko straining against his invisible bonds, desperate to join them.

The battle was over almost before it had begun. This shadow, which went down very quickly under their concerted attacks, was almost definitely a minion, and not the one that they were searching for. Once the enemy had dissolved, Minako made the cursory search for the key, although she knew she wouldn't find it. Then she and the other two men rejoined Akihiko.

"I gotta get out of here," he was muttering. "Where the hell is Fuuka? She'd be able to at least scan this to see what's holding on to me."

Yosuke and Minako sighed, almost in unison. Minako just hoped that Fuuka hadn't yet had her eyes scratched out by Rise. Judging by the look on Yosuke's face, he was having similar concerns.

All of a sudden, Shinjiro let out a low, malicious chuckle. "We could chop the leg off," he suggested, holding his axe up above Akihiko's ankle. "That'd take care of that. Hold still, Aki."

"W-what, are you crazy?" Yosuke rushed over and grabbed on to the axe handle. "Get it together, man! That wouldn't solve anything!"

Shinjiro grinned, and obediently lowered the axe. "Just a suggestion," he said.

Akihiko kicked out angrily with the one leg that he could still use. "Knock it off, Shinji. We need a plan. I'm totally useless like this."

Minako, who had a plan, spoke up. "I think that a couple of us should go on ahead," she said. "If Fuuka and Rise can't scan for us, then maybe we should do some scouting for ourselves. All shadows drop things. They drop keys, they drop items, and they drop money. Maybe there's one of them out there who will drop something that will free Aki."

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke sarcastically, "like, maybe a force field generator." Minako glared at him. "What?" he asked. "It's not any crazier than what you said. I mean, what if we have to kill every single shadow in the whole place to find the one thing that we need? It could take weeks!"

"Then get on it," said Shinjiro, nodding at Minako. "Don't get hurt, and don't go so far that you can't yell for help if you need it."

A slightly panicked look came into Akihiko's normally firm and focused eyes. "Hey," he said, "don't…don't just leave me here. What'll I do if you don't come back?"

Shinjiro slapped Akihiko hard on the back. Akihiko winced.

Tch, quit whining," said Shinjiro. "I'm not going anywhere."

As Minako and Yosuke walked off together, leaving Akihiko and Shinjiro behind, Yosuke turned to Minako and said, "I don't get it. I can't really tell; do those two guys like each other, or hate each other?"

Minako shrugged. "Good question," she said. "Come on, let's hurry."

Since it was now only the two of them, where there had once been four, Yosuke and Minako opted to try to spy on the shadows, rather than to face them head on. Crouching in corners and hiding behind tables and chairs, Minako strained her eyes, trying to see what each shadow was carrying, and whether or not it might possibly be a clue to releasing Akihiko.

"This isn't going to work," hissed Yosuke, as a lumbering janitorial shadow crossed in front of them, wheeling a cart that had, apparently nothing on it. "We don't even know what we're looking for!"

Even as he'd said that, however, Minako had spotted exactly what they were looking for. Without making a sound, she grabbed Yosuke by the shoulder, and pointed across the hallway at a place where something red and stained with spots of black was dripping slowly down the wall. If Minako was feeling optimistic, she would have assumed it to be red paint. Since she wasn't, she was almost positive it was blood.

It wasn't' the blood, however, that had caught her attention. Just below the patch of blood, being actively dripped on as they watched, was a bright, shiny, flashing red button, the sort of button that one might push to call for help or to summon a nurse.

"Don't push the red button," cautioned Yosuke. "You don't know what that does. Everybody knows you shouldn't push a button, especially a red button if you don't know what is going to happen."

"If we push it," reasoned Minako, "then we'll know what it does."

"I can't compete with logic like that," sighed Yosuke. "That was such a guy thing to say, are you sure you're a girl?"  
"Don't make me answer that." Minako began carefully tiptoeing across the floor, looking in both directions for oncoming shadows as she went. "There are so many dirty jokes that I could make out of what you just said."

"After a comment like that," said Yosuke, following her closely, "I know that you can't be a girl."

Minako poised her finger above the button. "No, trust me, I am. I've just been hanging out with Junpei too much. Ready? Here goes."

She pushed the button. For a moment, it looked as though nothing had happened. Then, from far away, Minako heard what sounded like someone letting out a loud, aggravated oath.

"That sounded like Akihiko!" Minako tried not to sound too relieved. "Let's get back and see what's going on."

Before either of them could move, however, a shadow nurse came mincing towards them on alarmingly high heels. Minako barely had time to reflect that this was so obviously a man's dream, as no real, working woman would ever be able to wear that kind of an impractical shoe.

Yosuke fired off a beam of wind, sweeping the nurse off of her feet and on to the ground.

"Come on," he shouted at Minako, tearing off in the direction from which they'd come. "Run for it!"

Minako ran after him.

They arrived back at the place where they'd left Shinjiro and Akihiko, to find Akihiko now walking on his own, apparently completely freed from whatever it was that had been pinning his foot to the ground. He was pale, and looked more stressed than he had when they'd started, but was otherwise unharmed.

Much to Minako and Yosuke's relief, when they turned around, they found that the shadow nurse was no longer behind them. "Phew," panted Yosuke. "We must have lost her. Okay, now that we're back at full strength, let's-!"

Minako heard Shinjiro's sharp intake of breath, and watched Akihiko's eyes slowly growing wider. She followed their gaze and saw one of the janitorial shadows wheeling a large, metal table around the corner. This table, however, was different from the others. This table wasn't empty.

"No." Akihiko was shaking his head at the shadow, backing away one step at a time, bringing his evoker closer to his ear with every step. Shinjiro's evoker was already out, and he had the grimmest look on his face that Minako had ever seen.

"What is that thing?" she asked, pointing at the wheeling table.

"The only other thing that Aki and I agree on," said Shinjiro, in a low, hoarse sort of voice.

"It's the one thing we'll both admit to being afraid of," added Akihiko.

Part of Minako kept pretending not to know what the thing was, but that treacherous inner voice was telling her that she'd known this was coming since they'd' entered the hospital. She'd been dreading have to deal with it this whole time, and now there didn't seem to be any way out.

The thing on the table started to move. Slowly, painfully, it uncurled, stretching out a pair of arms and a pair of legs that were protruding from a hospital gown. As it sat upright and brushed its hair back out of its face, Minako saw that it was a corpse. It wasn't just any corpse, either.

"What the-!" gasped Yosuke.

The thing on the table was Minako's corpse. It stared at her with her face, the same face that she'd seen on the shadow version of herself, that first day that she'd been thrown inside the TV. Again, this Minako had terrifying yellow eyes, but there was something dull, bleary and dead about these eyes. They weren't menacing. Instead, they were just cold, lifeless, and empty.

While Minako watched, transfixed, the janitor shadow crumpled slowly to the floor, and dissolved, apparently of his own accord, into red and black shadow essence. The shadow of dead Minako looked right past the real Minako and Yosuke into the stricken faces of Akihiko and Shinjiro.

Yosuke's voice broke the spell that had fallen over them all. "Incoming zombie Minako!" he yelled.

Minako reacted first. Without even thinking, she rushed forward and took a swipe at the shadow with her naginata. The shadow didn't even flinch, and the strike had clearly been ineffective. Shinjiro came at it with his axe, but that bounced off as well.

"Physical attacks aren't working," announced Minako.

The shadow clutched at its skull, and let out a screech of what sounded like pain. The screech echoed through the room, and sent a stab of shock through Minako's mind. It hurt, and she bent over, breathing hard, waiting for the sensation to die away. All around her, the other three were suffering similarly.

"Quick," mumbled Yosuke, "what don't you like?"

Minako blinked at him. "What did you say?"

"What don't you like?" repeated Yosuke impatiently. "I mean, what kind of spells are you afraid of?"

That question, thought Minako, actually made sense. "Uh," she stammered, thinking hard, conscious even as she did so that the shadow of her corpse was launching a burst of ice at Akihiko and Shinjiro. "I don't know, I…I've used all different kinds of spells, there's none that I really…"

Ice, she thought. It's using ice. Dead people are cold. Ice is cold. What doesn't ice like? Ice doesn't like fire.

"Fire," she said out loud. "I hate fire."

"But nobody here uses fire!" Yosuke was beginning to panic. "I'm wind, you're lightning, Akihiko is lightning too, and Shinjiro is...I don't know, unpredictable? Nobody is fire! Where are we gonna get fire?"

Minako thought as hard as she could about that. There must be something, she knew, something that she had picked up or purchased that would give her enough of a fire attack to knock her zombie self off of its feet.

"Shinji," she began, "you've got an agilao gem in your coat pocket. I know it's there, I saw when I was staying over in your room at the Amagi inn."

"When you were what?" demanded Akihiko.

This, thought Minako angrily, is so not the time.

"Use the gem," she insisted.

Shinjiro, his eyes still focused and fixed on the shadow corpse, just shook his head. "I…I said I'd never hurt you," he muttered helplessly.

"That's not me Shinji, that's the enemy!" Minako wasn't even trying to control the volume of her voice anymore. "Snap out of it! I'm right here! I'm not dead, but I'm going to die and so are you if you don't throw that thing! Now!"

Shinjiro opened his mouth, then closed it again, shook his head firmly, took a deep breath, and lobbed the agilao gem straight into the shadow corpse's face.

The corpse didn't fall over, or even stagger. Instead, it exploded. Pieces of it spattered the walls of the previously pristine hospital, decorating them with gruesome patterns of red and black.

This time, the brass double key appeared on top of the metal rolling table, and Yosuke walked over to collect it. It was still dripping with shadow essence when he picked it up. "Gross, your blood's all over it," he said.

"Again," sighed Minako, "not my blood. Shadow blood."

Akihiko, on the other hand, really was bleeding from a gash on the thigh. Minako didn't remember watching him go down, but, then again, she had been preoccupied for a lot of the fight. Just as she was heading in his direction to examine the wound, Shinjiro ripped off a section of his own sleeve, which he tied firmly around Akihiko's leg to stop the blood.

"A buddy bandage, huh?" Yosuke was smiling, although not very happily. "I gave someone something just like that once. Maybe I do get it, after all. You beat up on the people you care about, sometimes almost as much as you beat up on yourself. That deep stuff, friendship, love, all of that…it can hurt, too."

That had been an unexpectedly pithy comment coming from Yosuke, and Minako smiled at him. He had hidden depths that she was only beginning to understand, and some of them weren't so bad.

"Hey…guys?" From out of nowhere, Fuuka's voice sounded in Minako's mind. She, Shinjiro, Akihiko, and Yosuke all stood up straighter, looking around to make sure that she wasn't in the room with them.

"Hey, you did it!" Minako was delighted. "Fuuka, great job! How did you get it working again?"

"Well," began Fuuka, "honestly, it's not that I-oh, oh, ouch! Hey! Stop it, oww!" Minako heard a strangled sort of yelp, and then, again, Fuuka's voice was gone.

Minako looked at Yosuke. Yosuke looked very worried. "Rise," he said.

Without needing to say anything else, Minako led the rest of the party back towards the doorway as fast she could. It had sounded as though they'd probably get back to the Velvet Room just in time to break up the catfight of the century.

**Chapter Twenty Five**

**Author's Note: **As I write this, I am about to start a three hour rehearsal for Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Despite the brooding, depressing atmosphere that play leaves hanging in the air, I will do my best not to make this chapter too much of a downer.

Anyway, here's a pretty innocent little Christmas chapter. After this one comes the less innocent, more significant and plot-heavy Christmas chapter, and then comes the contest between Rise and Fuuka. Uh, and after that things start getting reaaaally dark. Anyway. Stay tuned!

WARNING: I am exhausted. I didn't realize it until I started typing, but honestly just getting through 2000 words was hard going! I did proofread, but I probably missed things. This document may be full of typos! I promise to correct any of them tomorrow at the latest. Thanks for your patience!

**Chapter Twenty Five**

Minako was the first to reach the doorway. As soon as she stepped into the Velvet Room, she saw Fuuka cringing in pain, with Rise's perfectly manicured little nails digging painfully into her shoulder. "It's your fault," Rise was whining. "You're the reason that none of this is working! If only you'd just stop trying to interfere! Without me, we'll never be able to save senpai, and I won't let you get in my way!"

"You're being unreasonable," Fuuka said, as calmly as she could under the circumstances. "Stop being so stubborn! If you really want to save him, then back down and let me do what I can!"

Rise's fingers dug deeper into Fuuka's skin, and her other hand reached around and made a grab for the back of Fuuka's head. That, Minako knew, was a mistake. Fuuka may have seemed meek and mild, but when she put her mind to it, she was perfectly capable of-

A sickening smack echoed around the room as Fuuka's palm cracked against the side of Rise's jaw. Clutching at her face, Rise staggered backward and dropped Fuuka, who sank on to the ground, rubbing her now smarting hand against the side of her leg.

"How dare you?" Rise screamed. "Yosuke-senpai, did you see what she did to me? Aren't you going to do something about it?"

"Enough," shouted Akihiko, who had just caught up with Minako and was now standing imposingly in the doorway. Everyone turned to stare at him. "Aren't you ashamed?" Akihiko continued, the disgust dripping out of his voice. "Fighting on the floor like a couple of preschool kids? We have a job to do here. Get the hell up."

"You think Narukami would want to see you like this?" Shinjiro asked Rise. "Cause I doubt it."

"Huh?" said Chie, looking back and forth between Akihiko and Shinjiro in surprise. She and Junpei was standing together just a little ways across the room, watching the fight with slightly too much interest on their faces."Wait, when did you two get start getting along?"

Yosuke shook his head, holding out a hand to forestall any further commentary. "Forget it, that's not important right now. We have a serious problem, guys. We can't keep doing this without any backup. We're going to walk into something we can't handle, and get ourselves killed. Rise, Fuuka-san, this can't keep happening; we need one of you to back down. I don't care which one."

Rise and Fuuka both looked chagrined, and slightly sheepish. Neither of them, however, looked ready to cede their place to the other. They regarded each other warily.

"Oh! Hey! Check it out, I've got the answer!" Suddenly, Junpei sounded excited. "We'll have a contest. The winner gets to be our backup for the next adventure."

"A contest?" Minako wasn't so sure she liked the sound of that. "What kind of a contest?"

"Listen to this," said Junpei. "Rise and Fuuka will take turns leading us through one of those nightmare worlds. It doesn't matter who goes in, that's not important, but what is important is how long it takes. Whichever girl gets their party through the nightmare world faster is the winner. How great is that, right? I'm a genius."

"I'll crush you easily," muttered Rise. "Bring it on."

Fuuka said nothing. Instead, she simply nodded at Rise, and then got carefully to her feet, turning her back on the girl to go and join Yukari and Mitsuru.

"Okay, then." Yosuke sounded relieved. "So, we agree. We'll have our contest tomorrow, right here, in the Velvet Room. Which nightmare should we use? Uh…Kanji, yours wasn't too bad, maybe that would be the best idea."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Junpei shook his head emphatically. "No, not tomorrow. I mean, obviously I think we should do this, but we can't tomorrow."

"Huh? Why not? We gotta get this over quickly so that we can get back to work," insisted Yosuke.

Junpei stood firm. "Dude," he said, "did you forget? Tomorrow's Christmas. You can't…you can't fight on Christmas, that's just wrong. Nah, we're taking tomorrow off. Don't argue with me."

Christmas? Minako hadn't even thought about it. It was, of course, the winter break, which was the reason that so many local high school students like Yosuke were able to take so many days off for themselves. Christmas did take place during the winter break. All of this seemed so obvious, but Minako hadn't even thought about it. The last Christmas she remembered, or , at least, the last Christmas for which she'd been alive had happened at Gekkoukan. Now, here she was, with so many of the same people, on Christmas Eve three years later. Despite the trouble she was in, she smiled. Was it okay, she wondered, to be looking forward to this?

"No way, man." Yosuke's face was grim. "I know it's Christmas, that's exactly why we need to go all out tomorrow. I want to have Yu back as soon as possible. If he can't be back tomorrow for Christmas dinner, then maybe for New Year's eve. We can't slack off now just so that we can have a good time. What about the good time he's missing out on?"

Even before he had finished his tirade, Yosuke's eyes met Minako's. She saw the uncertain look that he gave her, heard the waver in his voice, and sighed. Yes, she thought, without needing to say it out loud. Yes, I'd like to have a Christmas with my friends, too.

"Hey," began Junpei hotly. Minako opened her mouth to cut him off, but never had her chance.

"Wait, you know what? Um…this is gonna sound really stupid after what I just said, but, uh, actually I promised Nanako-chan that we'd spend the day with her tomorrow. And you can't let a kid down on Christmas, that's just…I'd have to be some kind of monster." He laughed, and Minako turned away from him. She wanted to say thank you, but couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. As far as she rembered, Yosuke had promised to visit Nanako on Friday, not tomorrow, which would be a Thursday.

The atmosphere in the room took on an awkward, pregnant quality, full of the things that so many of them were thinking but not saying. Finally, Junpei broke the silence in his forcedly cheerful way. "Great," he said. "So, we'll have our contest on Friday, right here. Tomorrow, we relax."

As everyone filed out of the Velvet Room, Minako could hear Junpei saying excitedly to whoever would listen, "Oh man, I have been waiting all year for a chance to hang up some mistletoe! This is gonna be a Christmas that we'll never forget, just you wait."

"Um," muttered Yosuke, walking up behind Minako, looking uncomfortable. "I…wasn't trying to say that you don't have the right to…I mean, it's not that you and everybody aren't…um…"

"It's okay." Minako gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Honestly, it is. I understand."

**That evening, at Junpei's house…**

"Damn." Junpei sighed. "I never even put up a tree this year. Guess I'm all talk, huh? I wanted the best Christmas ever, but I've been so caught up in fighting and stuff that I forget to even buy a Christmas tree…"

"We can probably still get one, if you want," remarked Yukari, who was standing on a stool while trying to hang some tinsel decorations from the ceiling. "They have lots of last minute sales in the shopping district, and I'm sure Junes won't be sold out."

"Oh! I'll make a cake!" suggested Fuuka hopefully. Everyone else in the room turned to look at her. Alarm bells began ringing in Minako's head.

"Um," Minako said, thinking quickly, "that's a great idea, Fuuka! Why don't you ask Shinji to help you? I'm sure he gets bored, sitting around by himself with nothing to do. You'd probably be doing him a favor."

Fuuka gave Minako a look that said she knew exactly what Minako was trying to do. "Oh," she murmured. "Yes, that would be a good idea. Thank you, Mina-chan."

Sorry, thought Minako. She really did care about Fuuka, and that was one of the reasons that she didn't want to see Fuuka disappointed when the entire group found out that her cake was inedible.

"Whatever you do," remarked Akihiko, "don't let those girls from Yasogami offer to help. That guy Kanji told me that last year, they made some food on a school camping trip that was almost lethal." There was something almost like respect in Akihiko's voice when he said it, which was, Minako had to admit, was mildly disturbing.

"Hey, is that mistletoe?" asked Fuuka, pointing to the decoration that Yukari was now in the process of hanging up.

Junpei grinned. "Yup, it sure is! This year, we're gonna do Christmas the right way. You know, make some real memories."

The look on his face was so gleefully perverted that Minako laughed out loud. She only stopped laughing abruptly when she realized that all eyes in the room were now focused on her. Looking up, she discovered that the mistletoe in question was now hanging just in between her and Akihiko. Akihiko had turned an unusual shade of pink.

"Well, uh," he muttered, "I guess I-!"

Suddenly, Shinjiro strode over, took a firm hold on Minako's shoulder, and began steering her away from the mistletoe and over towards the doorway. "Come on," he said, shooting a glare in Akihiko's direction. "I want to talk to you about something."

Muffled giggling followed the pair of them as Minako let Shinjiro drag her out of the house. The last thing Minako heard before the door closed behind them was Junpei saying, "Actually, I think we might need more of that mistletoe…"

When they were finally clear of the onlookers, Minako turned sharply on Shinjiro, and frowned at him. "What was that all about?" she demanded.

Shinjiro shrugged. "I don't want you kissing other guys," he said. "What, you'd rather I didn't care?"

"I wasn't going to kiss him," Minako insisted guiltily, knowing full well that she had been thinking about it. "It wouldn't kill you to try trusting me a little more."

Honestly, Minako had to admit to herself, she had been kissing Akihiko not too long ago. Only a few days ago she'd met up with him for coffee at the food court, and Shinjiro, of course, would be conscious of that. It might have been nice, she thought, to have Akihiko's muscular arms around her again, just the way they had been on that afternoon at Junes. That was an unwelcome thought, and she tried to push it as far out of her mind as she could, but clearly Shinjiro saw some trace of it on her face, because he scowled.

"Crap," he muttered, "I don't even want you looking at other guys. Especially Aki." Pulling her close to him, Shinjiro kissed Minako like he meant it. A warm feeling started spreading from Minako's lips all the way through her fingers and toes, and she leaned her head happily against Shinjiro's chest.

"So," Minako said teasingly, "I thought you and Akihiko had made up. I figured you were good friends again. Guess I was wrong."

Shinjiro snorted. "Friends or not," he told her, "There are some things that I'm not gonna share."

His fingers wandered across her neck, and then he stopped, releasing her for a moment to peer over at the red wound he'd given her that morning. "How's your neck?" he asked. "Does it hurt?"

"No. Actually, I'd forgotten all about it." Minako smiled. "That was a pretty stupid thing for me to do, creeping up on you like that. I guess I'm a hopeless romantic at heart!"

For some reason, that didn't seem to improve Shinjiro's mood. "Other guys," he muttered, "probably wouldn't have come at you like that. Somebody else might have enjoyed it. I might have enjoyed it, if I wasn't so used to fighting."

"Some other guys would have done that," insisted Minako. "Akihiko would have done that. Trust me, it's not just you. This one time, at Gekkoukan, he…" Seeing the expression on Shinjiro's face, Minako stopped and bit her lip. "Okay, I admit, that probably wasn't the right thing for me to say there."

Shinjiro didn't say anything. He was looking over his shoulder through the window of Junpei's house. From inside, Minako could hear the sound of Junpei singing American Christmas carols at the top of his voice. It sounded like he was having a good time.

"Um…" she fumbled around in her mind for the right thing to say to Shinjiro, to make him feel better about the neck-grabbing incident. Eventually, she settled on something, and leaned over to whisper in his nearest ear, "I love you senpai."

Shinjiro's reaction wasn't what Minako was expecting. He jerked in surprise, turning to face her with his mouth slightly open. "Wait, what?" he asked.

"Come on, don't you remember the first time I said that? In the dorms at Gekkoukan?" Minako was a little disappointed. "I thought me saying it like that might make you smile. Doesn't that take you back? I guess for you it was a really long time ago, but for me it was pretty much yesterday."

Shinjiro watched her for a moment, and then his eyes softened. There was something unreadable in his face, something that almost looked like pain. It couldn't be, though, Minako told herself. Why on earth would it hurt him to hear her say those words? He had pretty much confessed to her already, hadn't he? Of course, he'd never actually said the words themselves, but all that talk about caring, and her being the only one for him…she knew that he wasn't the sort of guy to play with women.

Belatedly, Minako remembered the story Shinjiro had told her over dinner, about sleeping with a friend of Akihiko's and then never calling the girl again.

He wasn't really that type of guy, she assured herself. She knew him better than that…didn't she?

"We should go back," Shinjiro announced. "It's freezing out here. You'll get sick. We both will."

With his arm around her shoulders, Shinjiro guided Minako back inside. Now, she was confused and frustrated.

**Chapter Twenty Six**

**Author's Note: **So, I was going to go to sleep as soon as I got home. I really was. It was going to happen. Then, I got this great insightful comment from **AbyssOfShadows** that made me what to write some more, and to think harder about where to go with the next chapter. In the end, I stayed up late last night writing, and now I'm seriously wiped out. One of these days I'll get some sleep again, right?

In other news, **100 reviews!** What? That is so exciting! I mean…okay, honestly, I think the reason that I'm so excited by that is it means that you guys are really enjoying and invested enough in this story to be regularly commenting and critiquing, which means a ton to me. Thanks so much for keeping me company during this fanfiction experiment of mine! What fun it is has been so far.

Oh, by the way; this is a super long chapter, and there's a reason for that. There will be **NO UPDATES** this weekend, at all. No updates until Sunday night, maybe even Monday morning. My boyfriend is driving several hours out of his way to come and spend the weekend with me, so I have promised myself to put the computer away until he goes back home. Sorry for the delay. Please accept this extra-long chapter as my apology, and I promise to be back updating next week! The next few chapters after this one are going to be super plot-heavy, and we are getting closer and closer to our ending. Stay tuned!

**Chapter Twenty Five**

Minako had wanted snow on Christmas morning, but she had to settle for a clear, sunny, frigidly cold day instead. The air may not have been full of snow, but it felt like a blanket of white tingly mist that gradually began to turn her fingers and toes into numb cinderblocks.

It was hard, therefore, to wake up. Surprisingly, Minako had found a comfortable position to sleep in, with her head resting on one of the pillows that she'd borrowed from Junpei's couch. Her pajamas were too thin, and she quickly grabbed two of her new shirts and layered them one on top of the other to keep out the cold.

There was still no Christmas tree. Junpei, Minako knew, hoped to go out as soon as Junes opened to try and pick one up at the last minute. Most of the members of SEES were huddled or sprawled around on the floor, except for Junpei, who was already awake and moving around quietly in the kitchen.

"Hey, Junpei!" Minako waved at him.

"Huh?" Junpei looked up from whatever it was he was working on at the counter. "Oh, you're up! Merry Christmas, Mina-tan!"

"Merry Christmas," replied Minako, with a smile. "Come on, let's go get that tree before the others wake up."

Junpei nodded. "Oh, yeah, it's really a two person job, right? And it'll be great to see the surprise on their faces when we get back! Okay, I'm coming. Just, um, put some pants on first."

After Minako was dressed, and Junpei had finished up in the kitchen, they tiptoed outside to his car. Minako climbed into the passenger seat, and they drove off towards Junes, determined to find the best Christmas tree that a meager salary and a few dropped shadow coins could buy.

Unfortunately, that mission took a lot longer to complete than either of them had expected, and it was already almost one o'clock in the afternoon when Junpei and Minako arrived back at the house, with the brand new tree strapped to the roof of the car.

Akihiko and Shinjiro came out to help them wrestle the tree into the house, and before long it was standing up in the center of the room, with Junpei beaming proudly at it as though he had grown and felled the thing himself.

"So," he muttered as he gazed at the tree. "What's missing, here? We've got a tree, we've got the brisk winter weather, our friends are over to hang out…oh, and we've even got that mistletoe!"

"Enough about the mistletoe," insisted Yukari. "No one's going anywhere near that stuff. This isn't a high school mixer, okay? Try to show a little class."

"That might be a bit much to ask of Iori," remarked Mitsuru dryly.

"Hey!" Junpei pointed an accusatory finger at Mitsuru. "Don't throw stones, okay? I saw you and Akihiko-san making out under it just before I went up to bed last night. I bet you thought that nobody was awake to see you, huh? Well, guess again!"

Akihiko went white. "Uh," he mumbled. "Wait, I didn't-!"

Mitsuru rolled her eyes. "And what if I was?" she asked. "We're both adults."

"So," insisted Junpei, "then you agree with me that mistletoe isn't just kid stuff, right? It's a real old-school holiday tradition."

Yukari looked exasperated. "Give it up, Stupei," she said. "I see where this is going, but there's no way that you're going to get any of us to make out with you, mistletoe, or no mistletoe. It's not happening. Better luck next year."

"Oh yeah? Well, maybe it wasn't you ladies that I was interested in." Junpei was undaunted. "Maybe I had someone else in mind. Did you ever think of that?"

For some reason, everyone in the room turned to look at Minako. She blinked in surprise.

"Ew, no!" Minako shook her head violently. "No, that's…I don't even want to think about that."

Junpei nodded hurriedly. "Yeah, that'd be disgusting and very weird."

"Hey!" Minako glared at him. "I'm not disgusting or weird."

"What? You were the one who said you didn't want to think about it! Make up your mind, woman!" Junpei shrugged. "Anyway…nope. I had someone else in mind. Someone super cute." Turning around, he headed back towards the kitchen, saying over his shoulder as he went, "so now, if you'll all excuse me, I've gotta make a phone call."

While Junpei chatted with someone over the phone, Yukari gave Minako a worried look. "Do you think he's talking about one of Yosuke's friends?" she asked. "Is he going to invite them over? I don't know if we really want them to be here. Didn't they want us to go to the TV world today?"

Inwardly, Minako sort of agreed with Yukari. Having Yosuke around would definitely make Christmas a little more stressful and a little less joyful. Still, it would be hard for Yosuke, going through his first big holiday without his best friend, and part of her wondered if they might be able to cheer him up a little bit. It would be nice to be able to help take his mind off things. If Junpei was planning to put the moves on one of Yosuke's friends, then no doubt they would all soon have something else to worry about. Minako just hoped that it didn't result in any casualties, particularly any injuries to Junpei. Some of those girls with Yosuke had really been able to pack a punch, especially Chie. Luckily, Minako thought, Yukiko Amagi was definitely more Junpei's type, and she at least seemed to be the kind of girl who had the manners to let him down easy.

"It's fine with me," Minako said. "It'd' be a good chance for us to get to know them all a little better. All we've ever really done together is fight, and they seem like nice people."

"Nice people?" Yukari stared at her. "Minako, they're trying to…um…nevermind." Flustered, Yukari hurried over to talk to Fuuka. Minako watched her go. She could only assume that Yukari had meant to say "Minako, they're trying to kill you," or something like that. For some reason, in the twisted sort of reality that Minako had come to accept as her own, people trying to kill her didn't seem like any reason not to at least be friendly.

"Okay," said Junpei , hanging up the phone with a triumphant click. "It's all set. Everybody's on their way over. Oh, and Yosuke said he was gonna bring someone named Nanako. Any idea who that is? Do you think she's cute?"

"Yeah." Minako nodded. "She's definitely cute. She's also eight years old. Nanako is Yu Narukami's little cousin. I met her a couple of days ago. Her dad's a policeman; I guess he works a lot. Maybe she's lonely today."

"Ugh, what? There's gonna be a little kid at our party?" Junpei looked disgusted. "That'll spoil everything…" Turning to the sofa, where Akihiko and Shinjiro were watching TV, he added, "Anyway, you guys watch your language today, got it?"

"Shit," grumbled Shinjiro.

Akihiko shrugged. "Exactly."

Minako decided to make herself useful. Junpei needed some help cleaning up the floors and counters in the kitchen, and after that, Fuuka took over the kitchen to start working on her promised cake. Minako ended up helping with that too, and when Shinjiro saw the trouble that they were so obviously having with the recipe, he stepped in as well. The cake was sitting on a cooling rack, and Shinjiro was meticulously instructing them on the proper way to layer icing, when the doorbell rang, and Junpei went eagerly to answer it.

When Junpei threw open the door, Yosuke, Chie, Kanji, and all of their friends were standing on the doorstep. Nanako was there too, her cheeks pink from the cold, with a little knit hat on her head that had a kitten embroidered on the front.

"Merry Christmas!" announced Junpei, gesturing everyone inside. "You're just in time for cake! It smells pretty good, doesn't it? What a relief… then again, I guess something can smell good and still taste awful, right?"

Chie, Yukiko, and Rise, and Naoto exchanged a significant look. "Yes," mumbled Naoto."I'm afraid that is the case. Thank you for your hospitality." They all tramped inside.

"Merry Christmas, Nanako-chan," said Minako, watching the way Minako was staring at Junpei's Christmas tree. "What's up?"

"Oh…merry Christmas!" Nanako shook her head quickly. "It's nothing! It's very nice to be here." Biting her lip, she thought for a moment, and then added, "But…why is the tree so empty? Where are all the ornaments? Christmas trees are supposed to sparkle."

Good point, thought Minako. "I don't think Junpei usually keeps a Christmas tree, so he may not have any ornaments around the house. I'll try to find something that we can use." She contemplated going over to Junes to look for some colored popcorn to turn into a decoration. Maybe Yukari had more of that tinsel to wrap around the tree. A blank, boring Christmas tree didn't seem right for a real party, especially now that Nanako was here.

"Here, use this." Yosuke, who had been standing close enough to hear their conversation, held out a colorful keychain that had a charm on the end which looked like Teddie dressed up in his mascot fur. "They handed them out to all of the employees at Junes, sort of like consolation Christmas presents. It shouldn't be too heavy to hang."

"Yay, thank you!" Nanako carefully placed the keychain on a low bough of the tree. "That looks great!"

"Um…how about this?" Ken, who had drifted towards the door when Kanji came in, handed Minako what looked like a shiny toy sheriff's badge. "I don't know what this was doing in my pocket," he mumbled.

Naoto smiled at him from where she was standing over by the kitchen. "There's no need to be embarrassed. I have something like that as well. Mind you, I don't usually carry it about in my pocket, but it is still sitting on my grandfather's mantelpiece to this day. When I was your age, I used to wear it to school with me."

"Wh-what? Really? But…you're so cool." Ken gave Naoto a wide eyed look. She just laughed. Nanako took the star badge and hung it carefully up on the tree.

Over the course of the next two hours, everyone found something that they could use to decorate the Christmas tree. Fuuka donated some blue and pink candy that she had been planning to use to decorate the cake. Yukari and Mitsuru both tied hair ribbons and bracelets on to some of the branches. Chie looped on a few of her workout wristbands, and Yukiko gave them an unused Amagi Inn handkerchief, tied carefully into a bow. At the top of the tree, they placed a Rise Kujikawa celebrity style doll, which Rise insisted had been sent to her for promotional reasons.

"I was thinking of giving it to Nanako as a present," she told them.

"But…why would I need a Rise doll?" asked Nanako, reasonably. "I have the real thing!"

Shinjiro, Akihiko, Junpei, and Kanji all managed to find a few things to contribute as well, and before long, the once lonely looking Christmas tree was now festooned with the strangest collection of makeshift ornaments that Minako had ever seen.

"Wow," whispered Nanako, delighted. "Now it's beautiful!"

And it was, thought Minako, with a little smile. It was certainly strange looking, but it was their tree. No one else in the world would have a Christmas tree that looked just like this, just like no one else in the world would have a group of friends who were just as unexpected as hers were. That seemed to be appropriate, and it filled her with a warm sort of home-like feeling that she didn't remember having ever experienced before.

"Thank you, Nanako-chan," Minako murmured.

"Hmm?" Nanako looked puzzled. "For what?"

Before Minako had a chance to try and explain what she meant, Shinjiro was at her elbow. "Sorry," he said to Nanako, "but can I borrow Minako for a minute?"

"Do you promise to bring her back?" asked Nanako, seriously.

Shinjiro, equally seriously, nodded back at her. "I promise. You see that guy over there, with the knife? That's Aki. Go get him to cut you a slice of cake. Tell him I said to make it a big one."

Nanako frowned slightly. "Um, I'm not sure dad would like that…he and my teacher are always telling me how important it is to be healthy."

Shinjiro shrugged. "I won't tell him if you don't."

As Nanako ran off towards Akihiko, Minako grinned and linked her arm through Shinjiro's. "You're good with kids," she said. "It's sweet."

"Huh?" Shinjiro looked surprised. " I guess. Kids are just people, only smaller." He frowned. "It can be tough to be a kid sometimes. Nobody takes you seriously. Anyway, Merry Christmas." With that, he presented Minako with a chocolate cupcake, carefully frosted over with green and white icing. There was a little red heart candy pressed into one corner of the icing. "We had some batter leftover when we put the cake in the oven, so…since I didn't have time to get you a present, I made you this. Aki said that you like sweet stuff, and, uh, well, I hope it tastes okay." Shinjiro looked uncertain, as if he was ready to take back the gift the moment Minako showed any disapproval.

"I know it'll be fantastic," Minako assured him, smiling at the cutesy little cupcake in her hand. "Thank you for thinking of me." At the same time, she was uncomfortably conscious that it hadn't even occurred to her to get Shinjiro a Christmas gift. At least he'd made her something. She hadn't even tried. As a sort of apology for that, Minako leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

She felt his cheek growing warmer under the pressure of her lips. "Yeah," he mumbled. "No problem. I just wish I'd known what to get you for real. I'm not good at presents."

"Presents aren't hard," said Minako. "Actually, there is something easy that you could give me. That is, if you want to." She felt manipulative and conniving even as she said it, and of course, Minako knew that Shinjiro didn't deserve that treatment. At the same time, however, she'd tossed and turned the entire night wondering about why he'd refused her the evening before. Now, she had a chance to sort things out.

She was almost disappointed when Shinjiro walked right into the trap. "Yeah," he agreed readily. "Whatever you want."

Whatever I want, thought Minako. He doesn't even know what I'm going to ask. "Well," she began hesitantly, "um…Shinji, do you remember what I said to you yesterday? When you dragged me outside, after Akihiko and I were standing under the mistletoe? I told you that I loved you, and I was wondering if maybe…?"

Shinjiro's face fell. "Don't ask me that," he said, and his voice took on a harsher, gruff quality that Minako knew hadn't been there the moment before.

"But why?" She tried not to it come out sounding like a whine. "I don't understand. After everything you've said to me since I came back, and after the way that you…that you touched me, I thought that you must feel the same way. I've told you how I feel. I've told you more than once. It hasn't changed. Now all I want is for you to tell me your feelings. I don't understand why that's so difficult." She paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and then said quietly, "I want to know before the end. Before it's all over, I want to hear you say it. Please."

"That's it." Shinjiro's face was unreadable. "That's why I can't say it."

"That," insisted Minako, "does not make any sense at all."

Shinjiro took a look around the room, apparently to see if anyone was watching them. Everyone else seemed to be engaged in conversations or activities with friends both old and new, and no one was paying Minako and Shinjiro any attention. Shinjiro took Minako by both wrists, and drew her closer to him.

"If I say it," he told her, "then you'll be able to die happy, is that it? You can go, knowing how much I really cared? Is that what you want?"

"Yes," confessed Minako. "Is that so wrong?"

Releasing her, Shinjiro averted his eyes. "Yeah," he said. "It is. Sorry, but…it is."

"Shinji," Minako knew she was almost begging, but she was desperate for him to understand. "Shinji, I need you to be strong about this. For me. If you're strong, then I can be strong, too."

"You're asking too much," muttered Shinjiro. "Enjoy your cupcake." He walked off, and Minako stood there with the treat dripping icing on to her fingers. She held her breath and made a valiant effort not to cry.

After a few minutes had passed, Nanako came back, her mouth decorated with green frosting. "Oh good," she said, beaming up at Minako. "He left you right where I could find you again!" Then she stopped, and peered more closely into Minako's face. "Uh oh…why do you look so sad? Did that man say something mean?"

"N-no," Minako stammered, forcing a smile back on to her face. "No, Shinji's a very good man, it's not his fault." That was true, she thought. Shinjiro was only being honest with her. She couldn't keep asking him to pretend that everything was going to be fine, that they were happy together and that there was nothing to worry about. This wasn't the normal romance that either of them had imagined or hoped for. It was unfair of her to expect him to play along.

Even as she told herself all this, however, Minako still wished that he would try to understand. It wasn't as though she had ever wanted it to be this way. There simply was no other choice. He knew that, didn't he?

"Okay…" Nanako looked slightly puzzled. "Um, if you say so. Oh, you have a cupcake! I didn't know there were cupcakes. The cake was really yummy!"

Minako expelled a breath, and then sank down to sit on the floor, resting her back carefully up against the Christmas tree stand. Nanako curled up cross-legged next to her. "Um, Minako-san…can I ask you something?"

"Of course," said Minako absently.

"Well…" Nanako sounded worried. "Yosuke told me that we could bring some cake and decorations from the house, to wish Big Bro a Merry Christmas."

Minako blinked. "At…the cemetery?"

"Yeah." Nodding, Nanako licked a stray speck of frosting from off of her top lip. "Will you come with us? Please? The cemetery is scary at night, and Yosuke sometimes gets all quiet when we go there, and his face gets all angry, and…"

Minako placed a hand on Nanako's shoulder to calm her. Then she looked around the room again. Kanji, Ken, and Naoto seemed to be playing some kind of game with dice on the floor behind the sofa. Mitsuru and Yukari were chatting animatedly with Yukiko and Chie, and all four of them seemed to be watching Junpei, who was doing his best to coax Rise in the direction of the infamous mistletoe. Akihiko and Shinjiro were back to watching television, and there was an unusually large slice of cake on Akihiko's plate. He seemed to have spent some time scraping all of the frosting off of it.

Everyone looked so happy, as though they were really having a good time. Minako glanced up at the awkwardly adorned Christmas tree, nodded to herself, and then got back on to her feet.

"Yes," she told Nanako, reaching down to help the girl up. "Of course I'll come with you. Come on, let's go find Yosuke. We don't want it to get too late or it'll be too dark to go driving on these back roads."

**Chapter Twenty Seven**

**Author's Note: **Thanks for being so understanding about my taking a weekend off. You are, as I have said before and will no doubt say again, the best readers anywhere!

We are moving into the home stretch! Very soon, things will begin happening very fast for our intrepid heroes. I will be updating regularly again starting today!

**Chapter Twenty Seven**

After they left the cemetery, Yosuke dropped Minako off at Junpei's house. It was much later than she'd planned to be home, and when she walked in she found the various members of SEES all tucked in to their separate sleeping corners. Usually, Minako knew, the person who managed to stay awake the longest ended up getting the prime sleeping spot on the sofa. Tonight, it looked like Shinjiro had been the lucky one. He was scrunched up on the sofa, with his mouth slightly open and one of his arms dangling over the side. There was just enough room, thought Minako involuntarily, for someone small to fit right underneath Shinjiro's other arm.

She was, of course, very aware of how dangerous Shinjiro's reflexes could be. The barely healed wound on the back of her neck should have been a very good reminder of what a bad idea it was to try and be cute with him. Still, Minako couldn't resist. There was something awkwardly adorable about how vulnerable he looked with his mouth open like that. Carefully, as quietly as she could, Minako climbed on to the couch and tucked herself up against Shinjiro's chest, resting her head hesitantly against his shoulder. Then she held her breath.

Shinjiro moved. His arms came down around Minako, pinning her against him before she had a chance to even blink, let alone dodge out of the way. For a moment, she waited, expecting the blow to fall, but it soon became clear that he was still fast asleep, and that whatever instinct was protecting him was satisfied just to have immobilized her.

Minako let out a sigh of relief. Squirming slightly to try and get into a less awkward position, she eventually gave up, closed her eyes, and drifted off to sleep.

**The next morning…**

Minako awoke to find Shinjiro propped up one arm, leaning over her and blinking in surprise.

"Good morning," she said, yawning, then trying and failing to stifle it.

"Uh…morning." Shinjiro ran a hand nervously through his mess of sleep-flattened hair. "What….? When did you, um…" He seemed to be having trouble forming the rest of the sentence.

Minako smiled sleepily. "I came in late last night, and I didn't want to sleep on the floor. My back still hurts from being on the floor the other night, so, I figured you wouldn't mind if I tried fitting on the couch." She shifted her position slightly so that it was easier for Shinjiro to sit up.

"Oh, yeah." If Minako hadn't known better, she'd have thought that Shinjiro looked almost disappointed. "So, that's…why you're on top of me."

She laughed. "Don't be like that, I'm only teasing. You know I just wanted to be with you."

Minako heard Shinjiro's sharp intake of breath. It was a moment before he muttered, "You can't say a thing like that when you're sitting on my lap. You're gonna give me ideas. I can't help it, I'm a guy."

Ducking her head out from under his arm, Minako craned her neck to give him a quick kiss, but couldn't quite reach his mouth, and had to settle for somewhere in the area of his collarbone. "But you're my guy, right?" she asked.

"Yeah." Shinjiro stretched his arms over his head, and Minako heard a pop as his muscles began waking up. "Listen, about what I said last night…" he began, and then stopped, reddening. "Jeez, it's… hard to concentrate like this."

"Like this?"" Minako felt the muscles of Shinjiro's chest tighten against her back. "Oh, you mean…" She made as if to stand up, but Shinjiro pulled her back.

"D-don't just leave like that," he mumbled. "That's not fair. Being like this…it brings back memories. You know, from the dorm."

Minako sighed an exasperated sigh. "But I thought you said that you didn't like me on your lap."

Shinjiro laughed. "Heh…you still don't get it. I guess you've got a lot to learn about men." After a moment, he added, under his breath, "and I don't want you learning that from any other guys."

Minako decided that it might be a good idea to change the subject, before either of them forgot about their agreement to take things slowly. "Um, Shinji, you were saying something about last night?"

Shinjiro's face went wooden again. "I wanted to tell you," he muttered. "I'm sorry. I don't want to make this harder for you. That shadow thing, the one that looked like you, it said that you want a knight in shining armor." He laughed a mirthless, self-deprecating laugh. "I'm not much of a knight. Never was."

"We hurt each other last night, both of us," Minako told him. "It's okay. I think that maybe I understand."

"Minako," began Shinjiro. "I-!"

Minako shook her head, putting up a hand to forestall him. "Don't say it now," she insisted. "I know how you feel. I was wrong to try to pretend that we can act just like everyone else. Let's not have this conversation. I want to try, really try to spend every moment enjoying the chances that we still have to be together. That's what matters now. Okay?"

She smiled, a forced, cheery smile, willing Shinjiro to play along.

"Yeah," he said, nodding, and though he tried to smile back at her, she could see the pain shining through around his eyes.

"Come on," Minako insisted. "I'm having cake for breakfast. Are you in?"

"What?" Shinjiro shook his head. "Haven't you had enough cake after last night?"

Minako didn't' have the heart to tell him that she'd let Nanako eat the cupcake while they'd been in the cemetery.

In the end, Shinjiro insisted on making Minako a real, healthy breakfast. Although she complained about the fact that it wasn't made of cake like she'd planned, she was honestly delighted that even in the midst of all the craziness and the sadness, he was taking the time to cook her something healthy to eat. That was Shinjiro for you, Minako thought. A balanced diet was important to him. That was probably the reason that Akihiko, despite all of his various injuries and crazy workout regimen, had survived all those years that he and Shinjiro had looked out for each other.

The others soon began to wake up, and as they got dressed and went about their morning routines, Yukari turned to Junpei with a malicious grin on her face. "So," she asked teasingly, "how'd it go last night with Rise-chan?"

"Leave me alone," muttered Junpei miserably.

Akihiko snorted. "She's an idol. She knows every trick in the book. Junpei didn't stand a chance."

"Oohhh…" Yukari looked almost sympathetic. "Well, you can't be lucky every time, right?"

Junpei didn't even bother to look at her. "Rejection sucks," he grumbled.

Cleaning up the house took quite some time, and Minako pitched in to help Junpei and her friends get rid of all the streamers, vacuum away the cake crumbs, and deal with drink and food stains that had appeared on the carpet and the sofa. When it came time to take down the tree, Junpei and Minako looked at each other.

"Forget it," said Junpei. "Everybody else leaves their Christmas decorations up. We'll take it down next week. Anyway, I'm ready for Fuuka's big showdown with Rise. You're gonna get revenge for me, right Fuuka-chan?"

Fuuka didn't look too happy. "Oh," she said. "Um, o-of course…"

Minako rode over to Junes with Yukari and Junpei. The night before, Rise had mentioned that a girl Minako's age could get a scooter license in Inaba, and that Minako might want to consider looking into it. That way, Minako wouldn't have to wait around for a ride every time she wanted to go somewhere. The idea was a good one, she had to admit, but was there really any point? She resolved to at least look into it the next time she had a free moment.

This time, nobody had to hold hands while they walked into the Velvet Room. They had all been inside so frequently that the door was now visible to each of them. They clustered together around the row of doors, just like always. The difference, this time, was that the distinction between the two groups was significantly less clear.

Junpei, although he was now clearly avoiding Rise, still seemed willing to talk to Chie, with whom he had undergone the thunder ordeal only a few days before. Kanji, Ken, and Naoto, who had spent most of the party together the night before, were chatting together in hushed voices, occasionally shooting looks in between Rise and Fuuka, neither of whom looked all too eager for their long-awaited face off. Yukiko and Mitsuru were deep in conversation as well, which Minako didn't find too surprising. They were both, she admitted to herself, in a moment of catty, feminine weakness, too pretty not to gravitate towards each other and away from everybody else.

"Okay!" Junpei waved a hand towards the door to Kanji's nightmares. "This one was the easiest so far, right? So, let's use this one!"

"Hey-uh," Kanji began, but Junpei either didn't hear him or decided to ignore him.

"So, let me just go over the rules, one more time," he continued. "Fuuka and Rise take turns leading us through Kanji's nightmares. Same number of people in the nightmare each time, or else it's not fair. So, all we have to do is figure out two things. Who is going in, and who is going first?"

Rise and Fuuka looked at each other. "Well," said Rise, with just slightly less of her usual defiant spunk, "I guess I'll go first. Sure. This'll be easy."

Junpei beamed at her with just slightly too much malice in his eyes. "Right! Then, Kanji, I guess you're going in too."

"Um, I could go," Ken reminded him. "Kanji-san and I both have keys to that door, remember"

"I would like to accompany you on this mission," added Naoto, to the apparent chagrin of both Ken and Kanji. "After all, I have not had a chance to fight in quite some time. This will be…fun."

"Whoa," said Kanji. "No, wait, you don't need to go-!"

Ken, at almost the same time, insisted, "Naoto-san, there's no reason why you have to get involved in something like-!"

"Okay, done! Naoto, Ken, and Kanji will go." Junpei cut them all off, and received frustrated glares from all parties. "So, are we ready?"

Rise pulled out her persona card, and summoned Kouzeon. Both Kouzeon and Rise both watched in apprehensive silence as Kanji, Naoto and Ken lined up outside of the door.

"Uh…I can't talk you out of it, can I?" Kanji asked Naoto, more hopefully than perhaps he had intended. Naoto shook her head, and Kanji sighed. "All right. Let's do this. The sooner we get in, the sooner we get out."

"Ready…" began Junpei, "set…and…go!"

Kanji threw open the door, and he, Ken, and Naoto rushed inside. Minako almost ran forward to join them, but a quick glance around at the tense faces on all sides convinced her to stay behind. After all, this was a nightmare that they'd already been a part of, and this time, there would be legitimate backup. How hard could it possibly be? There might be more fires for her to fight outside the nightmare than inside of it.

Everyone was quiet, listening to Rise as she spoke through Kouzeon to the team inside the nightmare. "Okay guys," she said, "this should be pretty easy. You've already defeated the bad guy, right? So all we have to do is get you from one side of the dream to the other. Several feet in front of you there's a herd of…um…shadow teddy bears? Kanji, what is this place?"

Minako, of course, did not hear Kanji's response, but she could only imagine how he and Ken must be feeling right now. After all, Ken had been looking at Naoto as though she was rapidly becoming a hero of his, and Kanji…well, everyone knew, and was very vocal about the crush that Kanji had on Naoto. The nasty little voice in the back of Minako's head told her that she was glad it was Kanji and Ken who had to deal with this, and that it wasn't her.

"Maybe I should have gone in with them," she muttered, more to herself than to anyone else.

Yosuke laughed. "Nah, the man's gotta handle this one for himself. This is his chance to really show Naoto-kun what an impressive guy he can be. Maybe he'll get lucky, she'll get attacked by something, and he'll have to save her."

Minako blinked. "How is that lucky? Besides, Naoto doesn't look like the kind of girl who needs a lot of saving."

Yosuke shrugged. "That's…pretty much true, yeah."

"Um, okay, if you keep going that way, you're going to run right into a…giant clown? Really, a giant clown?" Rise was still focused in on the group inside the nightmare. "Ken-kun, that thing's immune to light and darkness. Go left. No, that's your right! Ugh, sorry, I'm sorry. Go left. Yeah, that way."

Looking over at Fuuka, Minako was surprised to see that Fuuka didn't look interested at all. In fact, Fuuka was staring off into space, mouthing something to herself, apparently oblivious to what was going on around her. That didn't seem right to Minako at all. Shouldn't Fuuka be more interested in the outcome of this than the rest of them? After all, her ability to help the party and use her persona did sort of rest on the results of Junpei's little scheme. Yet, Fuuka looked as though she was somewhere else entirely, at least, in her mind.

The tone of Rise's voice changed suddenly, and Minako could hear instantly that something was very, very wrong.

"What is that thing?" exclaimed Rise, her whole body tensing as she spoke."No way…I can't read anything from it! I've never seen anything like this before, you need to run. No, run! Get out of there!' Rise flinched, let out a little shriek, threw up her hands against an invisible enemy, and shouted "Ken, no! Somebody heal him!"

"What's happening?" demanded Yosuke. Rise shook her head distractedly, and Yosuke grabbed her by both shoulders, spinning her around to face him. "What the hell is going on, Rise? Talk to me!"

Rise shook him off angrily. "Leave me alone," she said, "they need me. There's something really ugly in there, something big, and I can't do a weakness scan. Ken's down, and Kanji's got a wound on his leg that's already bleeding out. I don't understand how the-no! No, you can do it, get back up!" Rises' eyes went wide, and Minako watched as her face turned pale. "No…no, this can't be happening. Please, no, don't give up!"

Everyone held their breaths, not sure of exactly what was going on. Everyone, that is, except for Fuuka.

Fuuka moved.

**Chapter Twenty Eight**

**Author's Note: **The first half of this chapter is for **SuperNova23**, in thanks for all the excellent advice and encouragement!

Anyway, now we're back to the angst. As you can see, we're getting closer to the end. As promised, there will be three endings, although there are still a few chapters left until we get there.

I should warn you that from this point onwards, some characters are going to have to make some drastic and life-changing decisions. Many of you may disagree with some of my characterization during those moments, and I strongly encourage you to voice those opinions over reviews or PM!

**Chapter Twenty Eight**

"Tell me," said Fuuka, crossing the room to stand by Rise's side.

Rise just stared at her.

"Tell me," insisted Fuuka, more firmly this time. "This is no time for games or contests. Ken-kun is in there. What is going on?"

"I…" began Rise. "I don't know…"

Fuuka sighed. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler and more relaxed than it had been in any of the interactions she'd had with Rise so far. "Let me help you," she begged. "We will get them out of there, I promise? Now, tell me, what do you see?"

Rise swallowed, and nodded. "There's a big shadow, maybe…no, it's two shadows, but they're acting at the same time."

"Like two halves of the same whole," murmured Fuuka. "We've seen things like that before. Each part of the shadow will have a different weakness. You'll need to attack them separately."

"It doesn't have any weaknesses!" squealed Rise. "Everything they throw at it just bounces right off!"

"Then they need to separate one part of the shadow from the other," insisted Fuuka patiently. "Kill one side, that will weaken the other. Have them focus all of their attacks on one piece of the shadow."

Rise was shaking her head miserably. "But it's too late," she wailed. "Ken's down, Kanji's down, and Naoto is-!"

Fuuka stared at her in disbelief. "Are you supporting them or not?" she asked, and Minako, for the first time, saw how much Fuuka had aged since they'd been together in high school. She was a woman, now, not a timid girl who'd been bullied by the popular girls in the hallways. Fuuka was radiating a sense of command and competence that both alarmed Minako and filled her with pride at the same time.

"O-of course I am," said Rise, still trying to hold on to any remnants of her own pride.

"Then heal them," commanded Fuuka.

Minako watched as Rise and Kouzeon performed some sort of healing spell on the party inside the nightmare. It was a strange thing to watch from the outside. Although Rise remained physically present in the room, for a few moments while she was performing the spell, it seemed as though she was outside of her body, entirely distant from the rest of the occupants of the Velvet Room.

After a moment, Fuuka began to look impatient. "Well?" she asked."Is it working?"

Rise's eyes were desperate. "It's not enough…it's not enough, the wounds are too terrible." It looked as though Rise were about to cry.

"Then we need to get them out," said Fuuka. "Focus on helping them escape, as hard as you can."

Rise focused. She focused so hard, and so carefully on her extraction spell that she did apparently notice when Fuuka took out her evoker, and quietly summoned Juno to her side. Minako held her breath. She knew that many of the other people in the room were holding theirs as well, watching and silently praying that Fuuka and Rise's personas didn't cancel out the abilities of the other as they had every other time this had been tried so far.

Fuuka's eyes closed. Her mouth began to move again, silently, deliberately, and Minako could see that she was now in direct contact with the party inside the nightmare.

"Huh? Startled, Rise jerked around to look at Fuuka. "Hey! When did you get in-?"

Fuuka put a hand gently on Rise's shoulder. "Please," she murmured. "Concentrate."

A few tense, silent minutes passed by, while both Rise and Fuuka focused all of their attention and ability on their friends inside the nightmare room. Minako had to stifle a smile when Rise suddenly exclaimed, "Wha-that was amazing! You healed them! All of them! How did you do that?"

"Juno can perform an ability called Oracle," said Fuuka simply. "Now, they've recovered. Can you get them out?"

As Minako watched, the two personas, Kouzeon and Juno, drifted closer and closer together, until their arms were almost touching behind the backs of the two heavily concentrating girls. Yosuke and Minako exchanged a look, but neither of them spoke. The atmosphere was heavy with the feeling of anxious waiting, up until the moment that Kanji, Naoto, and Ken came bursting suddenly through the door.

"What the hell?" shouted Kanji, sweat rolling down his forehead as he stared wildly around the room. "What was that thing?"

Naoto looked shaken. "Kanji-kun," she panted, "your head is a terrifying place."

Ken, after catching his breath, looked over towards Rise and Fuuka, both of whom were opening their eyes and looking exhausted. As Fuuka began to sink down to the floor, Rise grabbed her arm and supported her until she'd managed to get back to her feet. Fuuka smiled a hesitant little smile at Rise, reminiscent of the old, timid Fuuka that Minako remembered from the beginning of her short time at Gekkoukan.

"You did it!" Rise breathed. "You did it, they're okay!" Then, in a slightly less triumphant voice, she added, "I…I guess that means you win."

Fuuka shook her head. "No, I can't have won…Rise-chan, it's still your turn."

"But…" Rise looked as though she were about to say something, but suddenly she glanced down at the floor, apparently distracted by something. "Wait, what's that?" She bent down to retrieve the large, brass double key that had somehow appeared just below the place where the two personas were standing.

"Oh," whispered Fuuka. "This is…"

Rise handed the key over to her, and she, in turn walked over and passed it to Minako. Minako looked from the key to the door with the four locks. Something inside of her sank into her shoes, and she realized that for the last second or two she had forgotten to breathe.

When she looked up again, she found that Junpei, too, was staring at the key, and there was an unexpectedly grim, determined look on his face.

"Let's call it a day," he said, and he didn't sound like Minako's beloved Junpei anymore. His voice was harsh, quiet, and disturbingly mature. He was a different man from the one who had walked into the television not an hour before.

Rise and Fuuka didn't argue. The idea of winning or losing the contest no longer seemed very important. Juno and Kouzeon disappeared, and the two girls led the rest of the group out of the Velvet Room and into the electronics department of Junes.

So, thought Minako, as they stood amongst the rows of televisions on display for sale. This is it. We've found the last key. When we go through that door, then…

"Minako." She turned to see Yosuke walking quickly towards her. In a moment of sudden, irrational panic, she stepped backwards, and stumbled into a television monitor, couldn't catch herself in time, and ended up supporting herself against Yosuke's outstretched arm.

"Hey!" Yosuke threw out his other arm to steady her. "Hey, are you okay? You look terrible. You're not getting sick, are you? We should get you home."

"No, I'm fine." Minako recoiled from him and scrambled back to stand on her own two feet. "I'm all right, really. It was just that…for a moment there, I…"

For a moment there, thought Minako, I realized that I've run out of time. She knew that she didn't have to say it out loud, that Yosuke already knew, already understood what the fourth key meant. He'd been waiting, hoping for that to happen all this time, hadn't he?

She took a couple of steps away from him, uncertain of just what she was worried that he was going to do, but positive in that moment that he wasn't, and had never been on her side. Fear coursed unhindered through her entire body, flooding her with the desire to turn around and run for it, to run away from all of these horrible people that were determined to push her back towards a fate that she'd never asked for in the first place. She had to get out of here, had to get as far away from here as she could, to a place where they'd never find her, and never be able to send her back there, back to that empty, nothing-filled void of death.

"Hey! Minako!" She could see her own fear echoed in Yosuke's face, as he stopped in his tracks and stared at her. She wondered what she must look like to him right now. He must think I'm crazy, she thought. Maybe I am crazy. After all, this was what she'd been expecting and preparing for, wasn't it? So why all of these feelings all of a sudden?

Slowly, Minako felt her senses begin to return, and she could feel herself breathing again, hesitantly, but steadily. She let Yosuke put a supportive arm around her shoulders and walk her back towards the rest of the group, all of whom were staring at her with wide-eyed concern.

"I'm sorry," she began, but Yosuke cut her off.

"No," he insisted. "No, don't say that. Let's…let's just get you back to Junpei's."

**That evening, at Junpei's house…**

Later that night, Minako sat in the kitchen and stared into a cup of coffee at she listened to both her and Yosuke's friends talking amongst themselves.

"We should go to the shrine tonight," Yukiko was saying. "To pray for the best luck when we decide to go through that big door."

"Yeah," agreed Chie. "I mean, with the way things have been going so far, we'll need all the luck we can get."

Luck, thought Minako. She could tell by the looks on everyone's faces that luck would mean something very different for each and every one of them.

"Ooh! And we can stay tonight at the inn, too," added Yukiko, apparently warming to the idea of another sort of party. "It'll be like a last hurrah before the final battle!"

Someone, Minako wasn't sure who, inhaled sharply, and as Yukiko looked around the room, her eyes rested on Minako, and her face fell.

"Oh," she murmured, "no, I didn't…I didn't mean it like that, I really didn't. I just meant that…" She stopped, and bit her lip. All around, grim faces exchanged foreboding looks.

Minako closed her eyes. This won't do, she told herself, willing her heart to stop beating quite so fast. She'd known for a long time now, of course, that there was going to be no turning back. Panicking and pleading at this point wouldn't achieve anything. All of these people had been, up until this moment, united in a common goal. She couldn't let that fall apart now, or everything they'd worked towards would be lost.

But, that's what I want, thought the horrible little voice in the back of Minako's troubled mind. I want everything to be lost. I want this mission to fail. I always have. Haven't I?

Minako forced herself to speak up. "I think," she said, in a cheery voice that she was surprised to hear come out of her own mouth, "that the shrine sounds like a wonderful idea. Chie's right. A little luck and guidance couldn't hurt us any, right?"

She laughed a careful, nervous laugh, and to her relief someone behind her laughed as well. Some of the faces in the room began to look more confused than angry or distressed. Minako met Yukari's eyes, and took a deep breath, willing the other girl to understand, to be the friend Minako needed right here and right now.

"And…" said Yukari slowly, her eyes never leaving Minako's for a moment, "we could get dressed up. It may not be the first shrine visit of the year, but really, any excuse to get dressed up, right? Besides, it's a sign of respect."

Thank you, thought Minako, nodding and smiling slightly at Yukari. Yukari looked away.

Everyone began talking, quietly at first, then more and more enthusiastically about an evening trip to the shrine. Yukari, Minako saw, had separated from the group and gone off to talk quietly with Junpei, who was sitting on the sofa with Shinjiro. Minako tried to catch Shinjiro's eye, but he was either completely oblivious or purposefully not looking in her direction.

I told him, she reminded herself, that he didn't have to be strong for me. I told him that we should focus on enjoying each other during the time that we had left.

But now, came that little, unpleasant voice again, now, that time is up. What do I tell him now?

**Chapter Twenty Nine**

**Author's Note: **Oh, how lovely. My boss called this morning to tell me that schools are closed and so I have the first part of the day off of work. I didn't think that I would get a chapter done until late tonight, but maybe I'll do that now and use tonight for sleeping…what a novel idea. Huzzah!

This is our last big romantic moment between our doomed couple. Alas.

We haven't seen a lot of Yosuke lately, have we? Well, very soon we're going to get a big, exciting Yosuke moment, as well as the long-awaited return of Aigis in the next couple of chapters, so stay tuned!

**Chapter Twenty Nine**

Minako drifted aimlessly around the house, avoiding other people's eyes, until she found herself sitting at the top of the stairs to Junpei's bedroom, crouched down against the wall. It wasn't likely that anyone was going to think to come up there to look for her, she thought, and for the moment she wanted a few minutes to breathe and be alone.

Minako wasn't sure who exactly she was avoiding. She both wanted to see and desperately did not want to see Shinjiro. The others were all getting ready for the visit to the shrine, and as long as she stayed out of their way, the whole mood of the gathering improved.

It's easier to forget about me if I'm not there, she thought. As long as she was out of the picture, no one had to think about the repercussions of this mission to save Narukami. They could just enjoy getting dressed up and spending time together again. She tried to be mature enough not to resent that, and failed. After everything that had happened, they still just wanted to forget.

It was like attending her own funeral or memorial service. Minako, like most other people, had occasionally imagined what it might feel like to watch other people mourning for her after her death. She had wondered what they might say, what sort of things they might cry about the most. It wasn't, she had to admit, something that she was terribly proud of, but everyone wonders how they'll be remembered. We think of it, she realized, as a testament to how much we're loved.

This, of course, wasn't anything like what she'd imagined. No one ever liked to think about the fact that once you've died, people have to find some way to move on. They'd moved on once, and they were moving on already, before she'd even gone. Practice, she thought bitterly, makes perfect.

Taking a deep breath, Minako got to her feet, planted a pleasant smile on her miserable face, and walked down the stairs to find the men all gone, and the women clustered around the sofa and giggling excitedly. As Minako got closer, she saw that they were looking over a collection of winter kimonos that someone had laid out in rows on the sofa cushions.

When they saw Minako,, they all predictably went silent. Without even thinking about it, Minako felt her forced smile get wider and more welcoming. "Hey!" she heard herself say, in exactly the upbeat, positive way that she didn't feel. "Are you guys wearing kimonos? Wow, these are beautiful…"

They were beautiful. Even in her dejected state, Minako was dazzled by the colors and fabrics. Reaching out with one hand, she ran her fingers along the lining of one of the kimonos, and felt the heavier winter fabric in between her thumb and forefinger. It was amazing, she thought, that these girls all owned one of these. They were expensive, difficult to make, and Minako herself had never owned one. She'd worn a winter kimono once, but it had been huge on her, uncomfortable and poorly fitted.

"Um, Minako-chan," said Yukiko hesitantly. "If…if you like, we have one that you can borrow."

"Oh, yeah!' Chie glanced over the row of kimonos, and gathered one arm in her arms to pass to Minako. "I mean, I think you and I are about the same size, so this should probably fit."

The kimono that Chie thrust into Minako's arms was in shades of very deep green, decorated with a pattern of pine needles. Minako found herself recognizing not for the first time, that Chie didn't seem to wear anything that wasn't green.

She looked up to see that all of the girls were watching her anxiously. "Thank you so much," she said, and she didn't quite have to force herself to give Chie a grateful smile. "This is beautiful. I'll be very careful with it."

All of the faces around her relaxed slightly. "Okay," said Yukari, pushing to the front of the group. "Come on, Mina-chan, we can help each other put them on."

"Where did the guys go?" asked Minako, as Yukari helped her into the kimono. Chie had been right. It did fit relatively well. Chie, of course, due to all of her training, was toned and muscular in places where Minako wasn't, but the kimono was forgiving enough that Minako was sure no one would notice the slightly imperfect fit.

"Oh, they went on ahead," Yukari told her. "We didn't want them around while we were getting dressed. Oh, I don't' know what happened to Junpei though. No one's seen him since we got back from Junes." After one more tug on the bow, Yukari stepped back, looking pleased. "There, that's finished. Now, my turn!"

Minako wondered, as she helped Yukari into her kimono, where Junpei had gone. Had it been too hard for him to be around, watching everyone get ready to go out and celebrate? She wished he would have stayed. Somehow, Junpei's presence always made her feel a little bit safer.

**Shortly afterwards, at the shrine…**

Walking in a kimono was hard. Minako was not used to making such careful, measured movements with her feet, or to keeping them so close together. She felt more feminine than usual just for making the attempt. She could see on the faces of several of the guys who met them at the shrine that they, too, were surprised to see her looking so much like a lady.

Of course, no one created more of a stir than Naoto, who was inexplicably also wearing a kimono, and looking terrified.

"We talked her into it," whispered Yukari as they walked up the shrine together. "We told her that we need all the luck that we can get, and that she'd be letting us down if she refused."

Minako stared. "Why would you do something like that?" she asked.

Yukari gestured briefly over at Kanji, who was staring at Naoto with glazed-over eyes, as though he'd just been welcomed prematurely through the pearly gates of heaven, and now wasn't sure what to do with hands.

"That's why," said Yukari.

Minako heard footsteps behind her, and Yukari turned around. "Oh," murmured Yukari. "Um. Excuse me, Mina-chan, I'll um…I have to talk to Fuuka. I'll see you later, okay?"

"Wait, what? No, don't-!" Minako began, but it was too late. Yukari hurried off faster than Minako had thought anyone could in a kimono. She turned around to see what it was that had made Yukari leave so quickly.

Shinjiro was standing behind her, his hands shoved into his coat pockets to keep them warm. He was looking at Minako with an amazed expression on his face, and when she raised an eyebrow at him, he looked quickly away from her.

"Wow," he said.

"Wow?" Minako couldn't help but laugh. "Is that all I get?"

"What else do you want me to say?" Shinjiro shook his head. "You're…uh, you look great."

Suddenly, Minako felt more self conscious than she had up until this moment. At the same time, it was nice to see the way that he was looking at her. Every girl, she thought, wants to think that she's beautiful.

Shinjiro slipped his arm around Minako's waist, holding her a little closer than perhaps he needed to. He led her forward towards the shrine. "Come on," he said. "We should pray."

"What are you going to pray for?" asked Minako.

Shinjiro frowned. "A second ago I thought I knew. I forgot now. Something, uh, distracted me." He gave her a quick look, and this time it was her turn to blush.

His answer was, of course, a surprise to Minako. Although she would never have said something so selfish out loud, she had been sure that Shinjiro would be here to pray for her health and safe return from the place behind the door. After all, he had never pretended to care much about Yu Narukami.

Shinjiro must have seen the slightly disappointed look on her face, because he shook his head, and his face darkened for a moment. "Some things," he muttered, "you don't just leave up to fate, okay?"

What, wondered Minako, did that mean?

As they stood together at the shrine, Minako cast a glance around, hoping to see Junpei in the crowd. She couldn't find him anywhere. Maybe, she thought, he'd already prayed and left. Would he do something like that? Maybe he couldn't stand to be around the others right now.

Minako tried to focus on her prayer. It seemed terrible to wish for the failure of the mission, and so she didn't do it. Instead, she silently begged the heavens for another way out, and hoped that any available higher powers would forgive her for not being quite ready for self-sacrifice.

"I'm not gonna let you go again," murmured Shinji. Uncharacteristically, he reached down and squeezed her hand in his. "Don't' worry. It'll be okay." His hand was much larger, and it enveloped hers, which she liked. It made her feel safer, even while she knew that his words were inevitably empty.

"All right," she said, for lack of anything else. There wasn't any point in arguing now. Besides, she didn't want to argue. She wanted to let him protect her for a little bit longer.

Instead of taking the car back to the inn for the night, Shinjiro and Minako walked. It was a long walk, and the weather wasn't exactly balmy, but it gave the two of them a few minutes together, and Minako treasured each one of them.

"I wish it had snowed on Christmas," she said, as they passed through the deserted shopping district. "I wanted to have a chance to see the snow with you this time."

"Yeah, well." Shinjiro shrugged. "Maybe next year."

After a moment, Minako tried again. "Then again, it would have been nice if I'd been here for the summer instead. I hear there's a wonderful summer festival in Inaba."

"That's only a few months away," said Shinjiro. "If you want to go, I'll take you."

Now, thought Minako, he was just being obstinate.

She didn't say anything else until they'd reached the inn, aware that anything she might say would be useless against Shinjiro's stoic refusal to accept the truth. It wasn't until the rest of the group had broken up for the night, and Minako had walked Shinjiro to his room that she finally decided to voice her thoughts out loud.

"Shinji," she said, "We're probably going into the television again tomorrow."

"Yeah," grunted Shinjiro.

"So…it's time." She felt him pull his hand away from her, but kept going nonetheless. "It's not going to do any good to pretend that we aren't-!"

"You don't understand," said Shinjiro, more aggressively than Minako had expected. He looked at her with unyielding eyes. "You're not leaving me. I don't care what it takes, or what I have to do. Nobody else matters."

He kissed her then, fiercely, possessively, and Minako could feel through that kiss all the things that she didn't need him to say, about how he was there for her, would always be there for her, would stand between her and anything that dared try to take her away from him. Her kimono slipped off of one shoulder, and Shinjiro's mouth moved down to that bare shoulder, then up across her collarbone, his arms tightening around her and crushing her to him as though he was never going to let her go again.

I love you, senpai, thought Minako, and tears unexpectedly welled up in her eyes. She moved a hand to brush them away, and as she did so a tear or two must have fallen on to Shinjiro, because he looked up and saw the expression on her face. He released her so suddenly that she stumbled back against the wall.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I shouldn't…I'm not trying to make you feel worse."

This time, however, Minako reached out to him. "No," she insisted, "you won't…you can't. I feel better just being with you. I need to be close to you, Shinji. I think that's the only thing that could make me feel any better right now. I need to know how you feel. If you can't tell me, then show me."

Slowly, Shinjiro took her back into his arms. This time, she was the one who kissed him, closing her eyes and letting herself and all of her terrors melt against him and into him until they'd fallen back on to the bed together. She lifted his shirt over his head, and rested her own head against his chest for a moment as his hands reached around her to deal with the ties on the kimono.

A moment went by as he tugged at it. Then, in a slightly breathless voice, Shinjiro asked "Wh-how did you even tie this thing?"

"I don't know," mumbled Minako. "Yukari did it."

The sigh of deep frustration that came out of Shinjiro caused Minako to laugh, really, genuinely laugh for the first time that day.

**Chapter Thirty**

**Author's Note: **So, here we are, in the last chapter before we reach the True Ending. Now, I am going to do exactly what I promised. I will post the True Ending, which will consist of a couple of chapters in itself,and shortly afterwards I will post the Bad and Normal endings for your reading pleasure.

There's a problem, though. I've been looking over my notes and my outlines for this story, and in the last few weeks I've come up with a ton more places to take these characters (at least, the ones who survive) and a ton more plot episodes. When I started this project, I thought it would be a very short-lived thing, but now I'm seriously considering writing a sequel. I've already got most of it plotted out…

So, I'll leave it up to you. Would you all read a sequel, if I wrote it, or have we had enough of this story for now? I'm not sure if fanfiction stories ever even have sequels…I certainly haven't seen any of them posted since I've been here.

Oh, and thank you to **Gin Nanashi** for helping to correct a factual error in this chapter!

**Chapter Thirty**

That night, Minako dreamed of the Velvet Room.

Igor, again, was absent. Instead, it was Margaret who greeted Minako with a grim expression on her face.

"It's time," she said.

Minako bit her lip. "What, now? But…Shinji…"

Margaret shook her head impatiently. "If not now, then when will it be time? This cannot be put off forever. Eventually your fate will catch up with you. You must go now, while your friends are not there to hinder you. If you allow yourself to wait for them, to say goodbye, then you'll never have the courage to do it, and everything you have fought for will be lost.

That, Minako knew, was true. She would undoubtedly let her friends convince her that she could put this off for one more day, and then one more day after that. She wouldn't be able to leave Shinji if he looked at her againwith that quietly protective expression in his eyes that she'd seen just before she'd fallen asleep. She would stay until he told her that he was ready to let her go, unless she left now.

"Yes," she told Margaret. "I understand."

Margaret nodded once, and there were hints of both sadness and satisfaction in her eyes as she and the Velvet Room around her began to flicker, waver, and blur. It vanished slowly, and Minako awoke in darkness, with the daylight still a long ways away.

Shinjiro was still lying on the bed, one arm cradling Minako against his side. His fists were clenched in sleep, and Minako wondered if he, too, had been dreaming about the end.

Quietly, she slipped away from him and over to the bag she'd packed, where she found and put on the Gekkoukan school uniform. Somehow, it was the only thing that seemed appropriate to wear through the final door.

Then, without a backward glance, Minako walked out of the room and into the hallway. She knew that if she stopped to look back, she wouldn't be able to hold back the tears, and the time for tears was over. She didn't try to deny to herself that she was frightened, or that she still wanted a way out. That didn't matter. It was time for her to keep her promise to Yosuke, before she lost her nerve or changed her mind.

Minako wasn't surprised to find Yosuke waiting for her in the hallway, and she couldn't explain that feeling. There was, of course, no way that Yosuke could have known she was coming. Still, his being here made a sort of sense in her mind that she didn't try too hard to rationalize. For all she knew, maybe Margaret had visited him in his sleep as well.

They left the inn together, and drove to Junes. As they were sitting side by side in the car, Yosuke said, without taking his eyes off the road, "This doesn't feel right. It's like I'm some kind of criminal, sneaking off in the middle of the night like this."

Minako just shrugged. She didn't feel much like talking.

"I mean…" Yosuke seemed to be talking more to himself than to her, in any case. "This really is a crime, isn't it? I mean, murder is a crime, and we…that's what we're going to do. What I'm going to do."

"It's not murder if you're not forcing me into it," muttered Minako.

"Would you be doing it if I wasn't here?" Yosuke insisted. Minako chose not to respond to that. The answer was too complicated to put into words. "A year ago," continued Yosuke, "I was all proud of myself for catching a murderer. I thought that I was better than that asshole. And now…"

Minako sighed. "You are better than him," she insisted.

"Yeah? Well, so are you." Yosuke looked over at her for a moment, and there was something desperate in his eyes that Minako hadn't seen there before. "You're better than that, so why are you the one that has to die? Murderers deserve to die, maybe. That's what some people say anyway, but you…you're just a nice girl. It doesn't make sense."

"Look at this way," said Minako. "I killed your best friend. It's an eye for an eye."

"Nah." Yosuke shook his head, slowly, and turned back to the road so that he could negotiate a corner. "I can't see it that way anymore. That's not what happened, right? We're all victims here."

He fell silent, and Minako didn't try to encourage him to any further speech. She didn't particularly relish the idea of being a 'victim,' as Yosuke had put it, even if part of her subconscious was screaming out for someone to save her. If she was going to go through with this, then she was damned well going to be a hero, and not put up with any of this damsel in distress nonsense that the secret part of her psyche was trying to force her into. If something's worth doing, she thought, it's worth doing well, and everyone would prefer to die a hero than a victim.

Save me, said the treacherous voice at the edge of Minako's mind. Save me, please.

They pulled up in front of the electronics department, and went inside with Yosuke's key, crossing through the TV into the shadow world. Margaret and Igor were both waiting for them in the Velvet Room, and Minako found herself standing up a little bit straighter as she faced the two of them like the hero that she was ready and unwilling to be.

"Well," she said, "I'm here." Her voice sounded smaller than she'd hoped it would. "They're in there, aren't they?"

Margaret nodded. "I can feel Elizabeth and Theodore's presences just beyond that door," she confirmed. "They will be expecting you."

Minako had nothing to say to that. She glanced over at Igor, who was wearing his usual, creepily excited expression, and considered taking this moment to say all of the things that she had always wanted to say, about how he was strange, gave her nightmares, grinned too much for comfort, and for that matter should probably use the kind of toothpaste that would whiten his teeth.

"Okay," she said instead, and held out her hand for the four double keys. Igor passed them each over to her, and she turned on her heel and strode to the final door.

"I'll need you to hold some of these," she told Yosuke. "Here, you take these two. We should try to fit them into the locks all at the same time."

"Uh…do we really have to do that?" Yosuke asked.

Minako shrugged. "I don't know. Let's try it and see." Somehow, she was sure that just putting the keys in one by one wouldn't be enough. Every other piece of this convoluted game had been ridiculously complex. Why should this part be any different?

"What's behind that door?" Yosuke looked uncertain. "We don't even know what we're up against. Maybe we should wait for the others after all."

Minako shook her head. She already knew what was behind the door, and only now realized that she had known the whole time. "It's my nightmare world," she told him. "My nightmares are in there. Elizabeth and Theodore. The ones that took Narukami, they're hiding in there too."

"Please tell me," muttered Yosuke, "that you have lots of nightmares about oversized cakes and getting dumped by ex boyfriends, and other innocent, girly stuff like that."

Minako blinked at him. "Oversized…cakes?" she asked. Then, she pushed open the door.

The room was, of course, not filled with exes or cakes. It was filled with exactly the thing that Minako had expected to find. The walls of the room were lined with glowing coffins, coffins that very much resembled those that had once lined the streets of Iwatodai during the dark hour. In the very center of the room was a tall spiral staircase, dark and shadowy, with a landing or platform just visible at its very top.

It didn't ,thought Minako, really look anything like Tartarus. For one thing, it was much too small, almost as though it had been intended as a toy version of the shadow tower. Still, nothing ever looked the same in dreams as it did in real life.

"Whoa," said Yosuke. "Okay, just tell me now, and get it over with. What's in the coffins? It better not be vampires…or zombies. I am not okay with vampires or zombies."

As Yosuke ranted on, Minako's attention was distracted by a figure that was standing in shadow just a few feet in front of her. The silhouette was familiar, so achingly familiar that Minako hurried forward a few paces to try and get a look at the figure's face. Upon closer inspection, she could see that it was a girl. She had short blond hair, and was wearing a black coat over what looked to Minako like a pair of very muscular shoulders. There was something oddly and yet familiarly glassy about the girl's eyes when she turned them on Minako and smiled.

"Aigis," whispered Minako.

Aigis nodded. "I am delighted that you remember me after so many years have passed. It is a pleasure to see you again, Minako-san."

"Hey, you…you know this girl?" Yosuke stared back and forth in between Minako and Aigis. "Oh, wait; this is a shadow, right? A shadow of one your old friends?" He made a grab for his persona card, and Minako held up a hand hurriedly to stop him.

"This isn't a shadow," she insisted. "This is Aigis, she's…"

Aigis nodded. "No," she said, "I am not human. I am not 'a real person,' but neither am I a shadow. I have been waiting for you here, Minako-san. I knew that you would find the strength to come."

"You did this," murmured Minako, realization dawning sickeningly. "You're the one who changed the seal, who resealed Narukami. Why didn't I see it before? It had to have been you, you're the only one that has that kind of power."

"Yes," agreed Aigis. "It was I who exchanged your soul for the soul of Yu Narukami. As you were both persona users, and both wielders of the wild card, it was not a difficult task. Both of you possess the power of social bonds, far stronger than any other bonds I have ever encountered. Only he could serve as the new seal." Her smile wavered for a moment, and she looked briefly guilty. "I am sorry, of course, that it took such a long time. Narukami did not awaken to his power until this year. I was not aware of him until very recently. Please forgive me. My weakness and lack of understanding is the cause of your being trapped within the seal for so long."

"Oh, I wouldn't take all the credit, Aigis," said a very feminine voice from somewhere behind Aigis' back. "You're not the only one here who took her time solving the problem."

Minako peered over Aigis' shoulder, and saw Elizabeth and Theodore, standing side by side at the very top of the nightmare Tartarus tower.

Aigis inclined her head slightly in Elizabeth's direction. "That," she said, "of course, is true. Without Elizabeth-san and Theodore-san's assistance, I would never have been able to find the key to your release."

"You're welcome, of course," said Elizabeth. Minako was chilled by the hint of giggle that always seemed to be hiding just underneath Elizabeth's voice. In this context, there was something alarming about it, even though she knew she'd always found it charming back in high school.

"Cut the crap," shouted Yosuke, and Minako spun around to look at him. Caught up in seeing Aigis, she had almost forgotten that he was in the room.

"You can't just talk about my friend that way, like he was some kind of arcade token that you turn in for a prize." Yosuke's nostrils were flaring, and his persona card was already clutched in his hand. "You're gonna pay for what you did to Yu."

Aigis narrowed her eyes. "If you insist on fighting," she informed Yosuke, "I must warn you that I am very skilled. I suggest that you give up on this plan of vengeance. I have worked very hard to release Minako-san from the seal. It need not be said that I will not allow anything to stand in my way at this juncture."

Aigis and Yosuke were now glaring at each other, each of them poised for battle. Yosuke looked angry enough to do some serious damage, and Minako was well aware that Aigis wasn't exaggerating about her combat expertise. Uncertain of what else to do, Minako drew her own persona card and made as if to step in between Yosuke and Aigis, saying as she moved, "No, wait, this isn't what I-!"

"Oh, no." Elizabeth's voice interrupted Minako mid-stride. "Don't be so ungrateful, Minako-chan. This is all for you, isn't it? Here, you look tired. I bet you've had a long few days. Why not sit back and relax for a minute? There, now…"

From nowhere, a large, iron chair appeared right behind Minako's ankles. Startled by the sudden cold feeling against the back of her shins, she stumbled mid-step and fell backwards into the chair. Instantly, a set of leather belts shot out around her, and she found herself strapped firmly into the chair, struggling feebly and unable to reach her persona card, which had fallen to the floor when she'd lost her footing.

"Now," murmured Elizabeth, "That's better. Aigis? We can't let anything happen to her, now that we've finally freed her, can we?"

Aigis readied herself for battle. Pallas Athena burst forth from her psyche and touched down just in front of her to stare into Yosuke's now apprehensive eyes.

"We cannot," Aigis agreed. "I am prepared to terminate, at your command, any who try to interfere."

**True Ending - Part One**

**Author's Note: **Oh dear, a lot of you did NOT like that chapter. I apologize to those of you who seem to have been disappointed. Perhaps I will get better at writing these stories as I practice more.

Well, I'm going to finish what I've begun, and it's a little late in the game to be changing plot and characters now, not that I think I really want to change them. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with how this all turned out. In my defense, I really do believe that under duress and certain emotional circumstances, other sides of people's personalities begin to show. Isn't that what Persona 4 was all about? So, of course, when placed in different circumstances, characters will behave slightly differently and react in slightly different ways.

Plus, Elizabeth never really did seem to be quite right in the head.

Anyway, for what it's worth, the True Ending will have three parts. Here is part one. I will post the other two over the next couple of days, although I readily confess that getting several PM messages that say things like OMG THAT IS SO WRONG HOW CAN YOU DO THAT I USED TO LOVE THIS STORY NOW I HATE IT is a little discouraging! At least please do have the courtesy to use lowercase letters. It's much easier on the eyes, and I do have pretty bad eye trouble…

**The True Ending - Part One**

Minako struggled helplessly against the straps of the chair, desperate to get to Aigis and Yosuke before they got to each other.

"Oh…this looks so familiar," said Elizabeth. Minako watched as she came down from the top of the tower to watch the conflict more closely.

Minako stared at her. "What do you mean, familiar?" she asked.

Elizabeth sighed. "You won't like it," she told Minako. "You won't like it at all. You have to understand, Minako-chan, we did this for you. Everything you showed us, everything you taught us; Aigis, Theodore and I…it didn't mean anything once you were gone. You taught us how to feel, how to understand…and we did feel. We felt so much for you. There were so many feelings, we couldn't take it anymore, and…" Beseechingly, she bit her lip and looked into Minako's face. "You do understand, don't you? We did this for you. Because you matter to us."

Something about what Elizabeth had just said wasn't sitting well with Minako. There was something that she didn't understand completely. Distracted from her struggling for a moment, she asked, partly afraid of the answer, "What…what was all for me? Elizabeth, what did you do?"

Aigis' eyes barely flickered away from Yosuke's for a moment, but the briefest of glances was exchanged between her and Elizabeth. Elizabeth sighed. "Well…this isn't the first time that Aigis and I have met Yosuke-kun."

Now it was Yosuke's turn to be surprised. "Wait, what?" he asked. "I think I would remember a crazy mechanical chick. No, I've definitely never seen you before. Quit trying to play mind games."

Elizabeth laughed, and then put her hand over her mouth, as though ashamed of her own laughter. "Oh, but…that' so strange. I'm not playing mind games with you. I've already played them. That's why you don't remember."

Yosuke and Minako looked at each other in blank confusion.

"Okay," said Elizabeth. "I guess I can tell you now."

The chair restraining Minako vanished, and she collapsed onto the ground. Instantly, Aigis was at her side, reaching down to help her back to her feet. Minako took the hand hesitantly, uncertain if this was the same Aigis whom she had come to love so much in their days at Gekkoukan. Would the Aigis she knew have done something horrible like this?

"Please," said Aigis, suddenly averting her eyes. "Do not look at me as though I have betrayed you. I have done nothing but what one friend should do to save the life of another. How have I done wrong?"

There was something so human about the pleading way Aigis asked the question that for a moment, Minako was sure that the old Aigis, her beloved Aigis was still there.

"Please," began Minako, appealing to the humanity that she now knew still existed in Aigis' soul, "Aigis, you've hurt someone else, hurt them terribly. Narukami and all of his friends are suffering because of what you've done to save me. We have to put things right, together; we have to bring him back. That's the way it should be. I need you to help me."

That, however, seemed to be too much to ask. Aigis' face hardened ever so slightly, and she drew herself away from Minako, shaking her head. "To protect one's own loved ones at all costs, even at the cost of someone else's happiness…is that not a human thing to do? Love is a human feeling. We cannot love everyone as though they were our own. Some people must come before others. I know that is how you feel, as well, Minako-san."

"Of course," but…" Minako couldn't seem to find the words to negate that. "It's not that simple," she finally insisted, frustrated by her own lack of ability to refute Aigis' logic.

Next to her, Minako could still hear Yosuke arguing with Elizabeth.

"You won't remember," Elizabeth was saying. "But not too long ago, there was a tournament in this television world. You were all there! You, Yu Narukami, your friends Chie, Yukiko, Kanji, Teddie…all of you."

"That's not true," insisted Yosuke. "Nothing like that ever happened."

"When I met you there," Elizabeth continued, "I finally realized what it was I'd been looking for! Yu Narukami, the only other human holder of the wild card! He was the only one I'd ever seen who had social bonds strong enough to rival those of Minako-chan. He was perfect! The only problem was that while he was there, you and he met Mitsuru-san, Akihiko-san, Fuuka-san…and you all formed bonds of your own. What was I supposed to do? How was I going to replace the seal and rescue Minako-chan if your friends and her friends were tightly bonded to each other? They would never have allowed it. Through the strength of the bonds that you had together, you would have been able to stop me and you wouldn't have given up until you'd succeeded. It was a very difficult problem."

Minako's mouth had gone dry. Things were starting to become clearer. In a voice that came out much more hoarsely than she'd hoped, she asked, "Elizabeth, what did you do to them?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "I broke the bonds," she said. "Look around you. There are doors here, doors into each of your minds and into your inner selves. It was easy! The bonds between you and Minako-chan's friends weren't very strong yet. Some bonds cannot be broken, but these…these were barely formed! All I had to do was to take those memories out of your minds, to make you forget. Easy, right? Then, there was no reason for you all to gang up on me."

Yosuke was breathing hard, and he had trouble getting out the first few words of what he said next. "Y-you…you messed with my head? With my memories?"

Minako couldn't help but be surprised by this. After everything that had happened, after all of the strange things they'd seen in each other's nightmares, Yosuke was concerned that someone had messed with his head? Hadn't they all been messing with each other's heads all this time?

Turning to Aigis, Minako asked, "Aigis, what about you? Did you help with this?"

Aigis shook her head sadly. "No. My memories, of course, have also been taken." Seeing the shock on Minako's face, Aigis added, "it was necessary to make sure that I, too, did not form bonds with Yu Narukami's friends. If my resolve were to waver, then I might have been unable to perform the exchange."

"You let her do this?" Minako had trouble believing that. "You let her into your mind, to tamper with your memories?"

"It was necessary," repeated Aigis, but her eyes flickered for a moment, and Minako saw the doubt behind them.

Minako felt the fury building up inside of her. These two people, people she had trusted and come to care about, they were the ones who had put her and her friends in this position. They had caused so much pain, both to her and to the people she cared about, and what was worse, they had done it all in her name, all with the crazed idea that it would somehow make Minako happy. Aigis' mistakes Minako almost understood. After all, Aigis had only recently begun to understand the meaning of humanity. Human emotions and experiences would still be traumatizing to her, no wonder she had tried so hard to find some way to assuage them. Elizabeth, on the other hand…Elizabeth may not have been human, but somehow, she had no excuse. She was a resident of the Velvet Room, a controller of persona. In some ways, even while Minako had been teaching her, Elizabeth had always seemed to be some kind of magical mentor.

It was to Elizabeth, therefore, that Minako finally blazed out, "How could you do this to me?"

Elizabeth blinked. "But I told you," she insisted. "I wanted to-!"

Minako shook her head, unwilling to hear it again. "Set it right," she said, and this time her voice was quiet, but hard as steel. "Put things back the way they were, before anyone else gets hurt."

The entire Velvet Room seemed to stand still for a moment. Then, for the first time, Theodore spoke up.

"Please," he insisted, "be reasonable. You cannot ask us to do this, after we have worked so long just to bring you back to us."

Minako was desperate. "You have to listen to me," she almost begged. "There must be a way that you can-!"

A commotion behind her stopped her in mid-sentence and made her turn her head. The entire combined membership of both SEES and what was once the investigation team came flooding into the room, with Shinjiro at the head.

"Minako!" he shouted, and ran towards her, but then stopped, and stared at Aigis.

"Aigis? What…what's going on here?" he asked.

Minako looked across at the faces of all of her friends, each of whom had come all this way just to have their hearts broken a second time by Minako's wavering fate. This was her last chance, she thought, to put things back to the way they should have been, and time was now running out. She had to do this, had to make Aigis understand before someone intervened, again, with the supposed best of intentions, and destroyed her opportunity to bring Narukami back.

"Aigis," she said, staring at the mechanical girl. "Look at me. I know that you realize what this means."

Aigis did not look at Minako for a long moment. When their eyes finally met, Aigis had a broken, dejected look on her face that was more human than anything Minako had ever seen there before.

"I am sorry," murmured Aigis. "I have hurt you. I only wished to protect you, to right the wrong that I had done by sealing death inside of you so many years ago."

"It's all right," insisted Minako, although it wasn't, and might never be again. "I forgive you. But please, can we…can we still fix it? I don't want to be the cause of anyone else's pain. You understand that, don't you?"

Aigis nodded. "I do," she murmured. "If it is what you wish, I will exchange the seal again."

Shinjiro started to push forward again, and Minako could hear his voice and Elizabeth's cascading over each other to try and reach her.

"You can't leave," Shinjiro was saying. "We haven't had enough time."

"Why?" asked Elizabeth. "I don't understand, don't you want to live? Doesn't every human want to live?"

I want to live, thought Minako. I want to live more than any of you will ever know, but I'll never be able to live with myself if I get life only at the cost of someone else's. I've been doing this for me all along, because I don't have any more right to live than anyone else does, but I also don't have any less. My life, whatever it is, however long I get to live it, should be full and meaningful, not shadowed by the fact that I had to take from someone else in order to get what I have. I can't go on like that. It would never work.

Before she had a chance to try to voice any of those feelings, however, Minako heard Yukari gasp from somewhere in the crowd. She turned to find that all of her friends were now staring at the doorway, although Minako couldn't quit see what it was they were looking at.

"Oh my god," whispered Yukari. "Junpei…"

**True Ending - Part Two**

**Author's Note: **Remember that time that I said you were the best readers ever? Still true. More true than it was the last time I said it, even.

Okay, so, before we go any farther, please take a second to look over the following disclaimer.

**WARNING: This chapter contains potentially disturbing content, including a scene in which weapons are pointed at small children.**

**Allow me to be perfectly clear. I am a licensed early childhood professional and I do not and will never condone the use of any kind of weapons around or against children. In light of recent events, I considered taking this piece out of the story, but I have instead decided to include it as an example of an entirely fictional, inappropriate and inexcusable act of desperation. I am trusting you to take it only as I have intended it.**

Thank you.

Now, a couple of things happen in this scene that will need to be confirmed in later chapters. Please don't panic if something seems implausible or doesn't make sense yet. There is more to come!

All right. Let's do this.

**The True Ending – Part Two**

The crowd parted slightly, giving Minako her first glimpse of Junpei, who had come rushing into the room with Margaret following closely on his heels. He was saying something, but she couldn't hear him at first over the rumble of the voices that had started open his arrival. Only when Yukari stepped out of the way did Minako finally see what it was that Junpei had clutched in his arms.

"Oh god," she whispered, shaking her head as she began to push forward towards him. "Junpei, no…"

Junpei's face was flushed as though he'd been running, and the set of his jaw was grim and determined, giving him a stony, stoic expression that Minako had always associated with the times that he tried too hard to be a hero. This was, no doubt, one of those times, although for the moment Minako couldn't decided if Junpei was casting himself in the role of hero or villain. Under his arm, struggling against his grip, was Nanako. She stared around at the assembled crowd with big, terrified eyes. With his other arm, Junpei had what looked like a gun pressed up against the base of Nanako's neck.

"What the-?" Shinjiro choked out. Shoving his way through the throng, he walked up right up to Junpei and demanded, "What the hell is this?"

"Just sticking to the plan," grunted Junpei. "Just like we agreed. Things started to look bad, so I got a hostage. Now they have to let her out of it. Let's get Minako and run."

Shinjiro shook his head slowly. "You…that's not what I meant. Shit, she's just a kid. She doesn't belong here."

Junpei shrugged. "What else was I supposed to do? Everybody else just kinda gave up. I had to make a call." Turning to Yosuke, who was now bearing down on Junpei with rage in his eyes, Junpei said, "Look, okay, this doesn't have to take long. Nobody has to get hurt. You let Minako walk out of here, and we go with her. Then I'll let Nanako go. If you don't, then…well, if you take one of mine, I'm gonna take one of yours. So what do you say? Let's forget about this whole resealing thing before anything gets out of control."

Everything, thought Minako, has already gotten way out of control. There was a sickening, horrified feeling in her throat.

"I saw the car leave," Junpei was telling Yosuke. "I knew you'd kidnapped her when I saw you sneaking away from the inn in the middle of the night. You thought nobody saw you, huh? Well, you screwed up. I did. I'm not gonna let you get away with this."

"Kidnapped?" gasped Yukiko. "Oh, no, that's not…"

"You've got it all wrong," snarled Yosuke. "Nobody forced anybody to do anything. She was ready to go. It was her decision to come here in the first place ".

Junpei laughed a mirthless, angry little laugh. "Seriously?" he asked. "You think I don't know? You think she wants to do this? No, I know Minako. She's a girl who wants to live. She's vibrant, and…she's always smiling about things. She'd never just lay down and give up like this, that's not my Mina-tan. If you're not forcing her, then you're guilting her, needling her, making her feel like crap every second until she thinks she wants to do this. She thinks this is 'the best way,' right?" Suddenly, Junpei was looking at Minako. Minako moved her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. "So," finished Junpei, "you're gonna have to let her go. Your people are important to you, right? Well, mine are important to me."

Nanako whimpered against the pressure of Junpei's grip, and Shinjiro stepped forward, closing the gap between him and Junpei. "Knock it off," he muttered. "This isn't what I meant when I said 'hostage.'"

Junpei laughed bitterly. "You and I were supposed to be in this together. I thought you were gonna show up last night to help me, but you never came. Then when I saw the car leaving the inn this morning, I had to act fast, make a quick decision. Guess you're a lover, not a fighter after all." His voice was disappointed and scornful. "I don't care. Maybe you're okay with losing her again, but I'm not."

"Junpei-san," whispered Chie. Junpei turned to look at her, and swallowed hard. "Why?" insisted Chie. "Why Nanako?"

"Because…because you love her," he said, and, just for a moment, the vicious look in his eyes faded away to something more desperate and uncertain. "Because I have to take something you care about if you're gonna get what it feels like to lose someone you love. There's nothing that wrenches your guts the way that feeling does."

"Junpei," whispered Minako, "they already know. That's what this has been about all along; they know what that feels like."

Junpei shook his head. Looking beseechingly at Chie, he muttered, "I never wanted it to come to this."

Shinjiro moved fast. Taking advantage of Junpei's temporary preoccupation with Chie, he hauled back and punched Junpei hard across the jaw. Junpei cried out and went down, releasing both Nanako and the gun as he fell. Nanako stumbled back against Shinjiro, then clung on to one of his legs and began to sniffle and sob into the fabric of his jeans.

Awkwardly, Shinjiro patted Nanako on the top of the head. "It's okay," he murmured. "It's…it's over now." He looked up at Minako as he spoke, and she nodded at him. Pain crawled back into the corners of his eyes, and he looked away.

Minako ran forward and snatched up the gun, turning it over carefully in her hands.

"This isn't a gun," she said. "It's an evoker. It's harmless. He couldn't have shot her. It was an empty threat."

All around, Minako could see people relaxing slightly, although there was still anger and betrayal in the eyes of Yosuke and his friends. Minako could feel the animosity and frustration crackling in the air all around her. Yosuke and his friends were beginning to reach into pockets, some pulling weapons, others holding up persona cards. Seeing this, the members of SEES began holding up their evokers.

Enough is enough, thought Minako. It's time for this nightmare to be over.

As Junpei, still bleeding from his likely broken jaw, tried to scramble to his feet, Minako began walking away from the group, towards the nightmare Tartarus tower, with the spiral staircase. Distinctive footsteps behind her made Minako aware that Aigis had begun following her. Together, they began slowly ascending the steps of the tower.

Just as Minako's feet touched upon the third step, however, she heard Nanako's voice behind her, and looked over her shoulder to see that the girl had broken away from Shinjiro, and was now standing just a few feet away, still looking frightened. "Minako-san…where are you going?" she asked. "Don't go over there…that place looks all dark and scary."

A lump arose in Minako's throat. "You…you'll have to ask Yosuke to take you home," she managed to stammer out. "I'm so sorry about all of this. Just…just try to forget about it, now."

Unable to force a smile, she turned around and headed quickly up the tower steps. The tower hadn't looked very tall from the bottom, but somehow the climb seemed to go on for eons. Minako allowed herself to relax as she walked, listening to her breathing and her heart rate begin to calm down and steady themselves. The higher she and Aigis climbed, the fainter and more distant grew the voices of Minako's friends, until she could barely hear them at all. All she could see, when she looked out carefully over the edge of the staircase, was a sea of faces now all turned up to watch her as she completed the climb.

At the top of the tower, Minako turned to Aigis, who was standing beside her looking slightly lost.

"I'm ready," said Minako quietly. "Create the seal."

Aigis blinked. "I…I cannot do that. In order to perform the resealing process, we would both have to again ascend to the location of the seal itself."

This is my nightmare, thought Minako. The one thing in the universe that I am the most afraid of is the one place that we need to be. How convenient.

Even as those thoughts passed in and out of her mind, a door suddenly appeared right in front of the place where she and Aigis were standing. Aigis took a step back in surprise, and Minako reached out to prevent her from falling back off of the edge of the staircase.

"What," asked Aigis warily, "is through that door?"

"It leads to the seal," said Minako. "All of my nightmares eventually lead to the seal."

Somewhere below her, a remote, barely audible cry made its way up to Minako's ears. She couldn't make out the words, but it wasn't hard for her to imagine what must be happening below.

"I'm sorry, Junpei," she murmured, knowing that they couldn't hear her. "I'm sorry, Shinji, I'm…I'm sorry, everyone. In a few years, hopefully it will be easier to forget again."

Then, reaching out one hand and taking Aigis' arm in the other, Minako prepared to open the door.

"Wait! Stop!" This time, the voice was louder, easier to understand. Minako turned around to see Yosuke running up the spiral staircase, his breath coming in gasps as he rushed forward to meet her.

Minako blinked at him. "Go away," she said. "We're at the end of the line. This is it. Mission accomplished. We already know that there isn't another way."

Shaking his head, Yosuke panted for a moment. "There might be," he insisted. "I…I just thought of something. It's something crazy, but…it kind of makes sense. Hear me out."

Aigis answered before Minako had a chance. Please," she said, nodding. "Explain."

"Okay. So." Yosuke turned to the crowd below, squinting one eye as he tried to scan the faces. "That blond chick…either of them, actually. Do you think they can hear us?"

"We can hear you," said Margaret's voice from somewhere behind Yosuke. As Minako watched, Margaret and Elizabeth both ascended the last few steps to join them outside the door to the seal.

Yosuke blinked, and Minako shrugged. She was entirely finished with being surprised or concerned about anything out of the ordinary that happened around here.

"Um…yeah. Okay, well." Yosuke bit his lip as he began to outline his idea. "You need Minako to make this "seal" thing, right?"

Margaret nodded.  
"So what I'm asking," continued Yosuke, "is does it matter which Minako you use?"

Minako and Aigis both stared at him uncomprehendingly. "I do not understand the question," said Aigis.

Yosuke took a deep breath. "We all have more than one inner self," he explained. "The good part of ourselves, that's the part that we want to accept. The bad part, that's what turns into a persona when we're ready to face it. I had to deal witht hat in the TV world, so did all of the rest of us. So did you," he said, nodding in Minako's direction. "Your shadow self becomes your persona, and together your real self and your shadow self make up the whole you."

Margaret nodded as though this didn't sound strange to her at all. "Yes, correct," she agreed.

"So if Minako's shadow self," Yosuke went on, "Is just as much a part of 'her' as her real self, then…can't her shadow self be the part of her that makes the seal?"

Minako couldn't help but let out an exasperated sigh. Yosuke had been right. That plan was pretty crazy, and even Minako knew exactly why it wouldn't work.

Margaret, as if reading Minako's mind, shook her head. "That would not be possible," she informed Yosuke. "A whole soul, complete with all parts, is necessary for the creation of the seal. The persona, or what you refer to as the 'shadow self' is only one part of the soul, and would thus be insufficient."

Yosuke stood for a moment, apparently lost in thought. Then his face went pale, and Minako watched him swallow carefully before speaking up again.

"But, a whole…" he began hesitantly, "is two things. I mean, two half things make a whole thing. Right?"

Margaret raised an eyebrow at him.

"A part of one soul," he insisted, "and a part of another soul…they would make, pretty much, one soul, wouldn't they?"

"It…is an interesting theory," murmured Margaret. "But you see-!"

"Take mine." Yosuke spat the words out so quickly that even Margaret looked taken aback. "Go on, before I change my mind. Take my shadow self…I mean, the other part. Whichever half of my soul that is, you can have it, okay?" He shut his eyes and clenched his fists, holding his breath as though waiting for a blow.

Minako placed a hand on top of his, and left it there for a moment until Yosuke cautiously opened one eye to look back at her.

"It doesn't work that way, Yosuke," she insisted. "I…you're so brave, but…it can't be anybody else. Only I can form the seal. There are reasons that-!"

Margaret cut her off. "That's correct," she murmured, and Minako could have sworn that there was a hint of regret in Margaret's voice. "Only Minako has sufficient connections and a full complement of social bonds to provide her with the power need to create the seal. Perhaps, relying on that power, she might survive the process of having one part of her soul torn from the other, but you…you could never endure it. It would kill you instantly. There is no one else who can bear this burden for her."

"That's not true," said Elizabeth, speaking up for the first time. All eyes turned to her, and Minako saw that Elizabeth was now staring contemplatively at the door that Minako was sure would lead to location of the seal.

"There's one other person who could survive it," continued Elizabeth. "Actually, after being dead, even having his soul torn apart might be a pleasant change."

Minako heard Yosuke's sharp intake of breath, and saw the abrupt way that Margaret snapped her whole body around to face Elizabeth.

"You can't mean," she began, but Elizabeth interrupted her.

"Of course," she shrugged. "Your beloved Y u Narukami."

**True Ending - Part Three**

**Author's Note: **Okay, so I lied…by accident. There are actually two chapters left. So, this one and then one more after it. And then an epilogue/preview of the sequel. I think that actually makes three. I think. Maybe only two. It will depend. And then it's really finished, sincerely.

Sometimes it's hard to tell how many pages my stuff is going to take up when I transfer it from the notebook to the screen…I'm not intentionally drawing this out. Honest!

You guys are being so patient with me, I appreciate that. Thank you!

PS: The Eternity arcana card is actually not my invention! It is part of a new/alternative tarot deck available for purchase on the internet. If you're interested, I can tell you more about that later.

Anyway, **WARNING: This chapter contains content that may be disturbing, such as pain, suffering, physical and psychological damage, and a really vicious cliffhanger, even for me.**

Again, you have been warned!

**The True Ending – Part Three**

"No," said Minako, in her firmest, most unyielding tone of voice.

Yosuke didn't seem to hear her. He was staring at Margaret uncertainly, rubbing a nervous hand across the back of his neck.

"But they'll live," he finally said. "You're sure that Yu and Minako couldn't die from this, right?"

"They should both be strong enough to endure the separation," agreed Margaret. "But as I have already stated, the damage could be…"

Yosuke cut her off impatiently. "No more doom and gloom. Tell it to me straight. What's the worst that could happen?"

Margaret sighed. "It is impossible to be certain," she told him. "The removal of the persona will leave an open chasm in the mind, a chasm that will attract the attention of the shadows. They will seek to corrupt that hole, to fill it with all the doubt and suffering that the power of the persona has long staved off."

"We fight shadows all the time," retorted Yosuke. "We've done it before, and we can do it again. What else?"

"There is also," continued Margaret, beginning to look really vexed, "the question of the damage to the rest of the mind. Surrounding parts of the brain could be incalculably injured. As the mind controls the body, any injury to the mind could and likely would have disastrous effect."

Yosuke stared hard at his feet. "But you're sure," he mumbled, for the second time, "that they'd survive."

This time it was Elizabeth who answered. "Of course," she assured him. "We told you that already."

"Yeah, I know," agreed Yosuke, more to himself than to anyone else. "But I have to be sure, right? I can't take any risks with this."

Minako felt something warm and dangerous welling up inside her, something that felt a little too much like hope. Frantically, she forced the feelings as far to the back of her consciousness as she could. "I said no, Yosuke," she told him. "You can't afford to take risks? Haven't you been listening? This whole idea is nothing but risks! What if Yu can't live with what happens? What if you're wrong and he decides that he would rather have-!"

"Then I'll never forgive myself," interrupted Yosuke, with a shrug. "What else am I supposed to do? Just let you walk in there and die?"

"That was the plan," Minako reminded him. "All along, that was the plan. We were going to do 'whatever it takes,' remember? I made you a promise."

"Yeah, well, I'm letting you out of it," said Yosuke. "I'm not a murderer. That's not somebody I ever want to see when I look in the mirror, you know? And you…I don't know. I guess you're the kind of person the world needs more of. It'd be a waste. I don't' think Yu would want you to die. Honestly, he'd probably like you. I'd like to have you meet him one day."

At first, Minako had nothing to say to that. There was nothing left in herself to say. She was emotionally exhausted, desperate to have all of this over with. For so long it had felt as though there could not possibly be any other way out, but…Yosuke was right. It would be a waste to give up now. She'd be wasting herself if she didn't try, wasting the tears that her friends were probably shedding for her right now. As for Narukami…surely, even this would be better than death.

"I'd like that," she told Yosuke. "I hope someday we can make that happen."

They stood there in an odd, almost inappropriate moment of peace in the midst of the chaos. Then,, Yosuke turned to look at Aigis.

"Do it," he told her. "Do the separation thing."

Aigis looked at Minako as though she wanted to argue, but Minako just nodded, and Aigis didn't seem to know what to say. After a reluctant pause, Aigis sighed, and told Minako, "Close your eyes."

Closing her eyes obediently, Minako asked, in what she hoped was a joking tone of voice, "This is going to hurt, isn't it?" She was delighted to hear that none of the rising panic she felt had crept into her speech.

"Yes," said Aigis simply. "It is." Very much."

With her eyes still shut tightly, Minako heard Aigis' slow, preparatory intake of breath. She could hear Elizabeth and Margaret moving around anxiously somewhere nearby. Everything was so still and foreboding that Minako felt her whole body go tense in tortured anticipation as she waited for something horrible to happen.

Yosuke's hand closed around hers, and he gave her hand a quick comforting squeeze.

"Hey, Minako," he began. "I'll see you when the-!"

The pain suddenly erupted in Minako's brain as though her head was being skewered by a white hot poker. Something was ripping and tearing at the corners of her psyche, wrenching through her head until it felt as though she was bleeding out through every crack and crevice of her mind.

Minako screamed. The scream and the pain flowed through her together, until her eyes snapped open and she found herself staring into Yosuke's terrified, stricken face. His mouth was moving, and she knew that he was speaking, but she couldn't understand the words. All that she understood right now as pain.

Then, from the very depths of that same pain came a voice, a voice that was only audible because Minako recognized it as her own. "Don't be afraid," it said. "Don't be afraid."

For just a moment, Izanagi appeared floating just in front of Minako's blurred vision. The persona seemed to twist and change, until somehow it was both Minako's persona and her other self at one and the same time. Minako's own face stared at her from the persona/shadow's eyes, and it spoke to her. "Though I leave you," it said, "I will not forget you. Though I leave you, do not forget me."

Those words, thought Minako, were so similar to the ones that she had said to her shadow, days ago when she'd encountered it in the TV world.

Then, the shadow was gone, and so was the pain. Minako's vision darkened and her whole world went blank and black as she stumbled forward and fell from the edge of the staircase.

**Shortly afterwards, below the tower…**

Yosuke watched Shinjiro tending to Minako, who was still lying, limp and unconscious in a heap. Junpei had caught her before she'd hit the ground, but Yosuke was well aware that a fall from that height could very easily be lethal in itself. It felt like they had been sitting there, gathered around, staring at Minako for hours, or even days, without any indication that she was still alive, other than the shallow rise and fall of her breathing, which was still coming out in little gasps.

There was still no sign of Yu. Yosuke had expected, after Minako fell, to see…well, he honestly wasn't sure what he had expected to see. Perhaps he had thought that Yu would just materialize out of thin air, or would suddenly, without explanation, be lying beside Minako on the ground. Yosuke had waited, impatiently, hopefully, then more and more desperately, while Yu continued not to come.

Now, watching the still form of Minako surrounded by anxious onlookers, Yosuke began to feel as though he'd been betrayed…or maybe as though he'd betrayed his friends. A sinking feeling started in the pit of his stomach, and that feeling was evolving quickly into a panic.

Just as he was beginning to let go of the little hope that he had left, Yosuke heard Yukiko cry out from behind him.

"Oh!" she gasped. "Look! Up on the tower! There's someone there! Is that…? It couldn't be, could it?"

Yosuke jerked his head up to look at the tower. There was a figure standing there, being supported on either side by the two figures of Margaret and Elizabeth. Yosuke couldn't quite make out the face of the figure in the center of the group, but his heart almost dared to leap out of his chest as he hurried forward to get a better look.

"I don't know," muttered Chie, squinting uncertainly up at the tower. "It kinda looks like him…but there's something weird about him. I dunno what it is, but…"

Nanako, who had been seated next to Minako's head, suddenly jumped up and began running for the staircase. Her voice came out in an uncharacteristic shriek as she cried out, "Big Bro! Big Bro!"She, at least, seemed in no doubt about the identity of the man on the tower. If anyone would know for certain, thought Yosuke, Nanako would.

He leapt to his feet, intending to follow behind her, when a heavy hand on his shoulder made him pause. Yosuke spun around impatiently to see the man named Theodore standing behind him, gazing pensively up at the people on the tower.

"Excuse me," murmured Theodore, with creepily cultured politeness. "Can you please tell me; which persona did Yu Narukami use before he died?"

"What?" Yosuke shrugged. "All of them, I guess. I mean, he had that Izanagi-No-Okami near the end. That was probably his most powerful one."

Theodore nodded. "Interesting," he murmured. "And Minako until recently had obtained the persona Izanagi. Izanagi, the beginning of the journey, and Izanagi-No-Okami, the end of the journey. So that must be why."

Yosuke didn't want to ask the question. He wanted to be running as fast as he could to Nanako's side right now, anxious to see if she was right about the person on the stairs. For some reason, however, he couldn't break away from Theodore. There was a look on Theodore's face that compelled him to ask, "What's why? Why what?"

"Look." Theodore gestured at the top of the tower. "The seal."

Yosuke followed Theodore's gaze, and noticed, now that the figures had moved aside, that the doorway was filled with a startling swirl of multi-colored light. The light seemed to be in perpetual, ceaseless motion, with every shade and facet of the colors glinting momentarily, and then vanishing and being replaced again.

"The Eternity Arcana," explained Theodore. "It is the endless cycle of life and death, born from the fusion of the beginning and the end of the journey. I have only ever heard stories before…I have never truly seen it. It is beautiful."

Yosuke, however, no longer cared. By now, he could see the faces of the figures on the stairs, and the one in the center was, without a shadow of a doubt, the face of his best friend. Yosuke began to run.

"Yu," he shouted, waving his arms and jumping up and down as he rushed towards the staircase. "Partner, it's me!" He was aware that his eyes were full of tears, but for the first time that didn't seem to matter.

Finally reaching the tower, Yosuke met Yu, Margaret, Elizabeth, and now Nanako at the bottom. The broad, ecstatically welcoming smile on Yosuke's face faded away almost instantly he saw the pain etched into the corners of Yu's eyes.

"What's wrong?" he demanded. "What happened to him?"

Yu gave Yosuke a shaky, exhausted smile. "At least," he managed breathlessly, "it doesn't hurt."

"What doesn't hurt?" insisted Yosuke, his voice rising a little bit in his growing panic.

Margaret gave Elizabeth an exasperated look.

"I warned you," she told Yosuke. "I explained the possibility of severe brain damage."

"I can't feel my legs," gasped Yu. Then, as Margaret and Elizabeth released him, he fell forward into Yosuke's arms.

**True Ending - Part Four**

**Author's Note: **Ohdear…this is very embarrassing. I am so sorry about not updating last night. I actually was sitting at my computer with the update half typed when I…apparently fell asleep. I woke up not too long ago with the computer sitting next to me on the bed, and with this document still open.

…I have no reasonable excuses. I must be getting old.

All right, so, this is the last chapter before we get to the epilogue, which I'll post within the next couple of hours. There will be two more endings, the bad and the normal, posted over the course of the next few days, although be warned, there is some overlap between those endings and this one. Still, I'll post the whole thing so that it's easier to follow.

**WARNING: **I confess freely and fully that I am visually impaired, and that I spent a year legally blind due to brain damage after a car accident right before college. I'm fine, it doesn't hurt, yada yada. The ONLY reason that I say this is that you may want to reconsider before messaging me anything like "That could never happen like that," or "blindness is a stupid plot point." Honestly, I am only trying to avoid any unnecessary embarrassment on either of our parts.

**The True Ending – Part Four**

Minako opened her eyes in darkness. At least, she thought she did. For some reason, although she felt her eyelids open, everything around her remained blank and black. The darkness stayed pressed around her like a blanket, unfamiliar, disconcerting, but not unwelcome. At least the pain seemed to have mostly receded. All that was left now was a dull, persistent throb that seemed to be everywhere in Minako's head at once.

"Minako," gasped Shinjiro, from somewhere very close to Minako's face. She could hear his rapid breathing as his arms wrapped around her and folded her against his chest. His skin was cold and sweaty to the touch, and Minako could hear the beating of his heart against the side of her face.

"You're alive," he mumbled. "Shit, you…" He took a deep breath. "D-don't ever scare me like that again. You hear me?"

Minako reached up until she felt her fingers brush against his face. They came away wet. "You're crying," she said.

Shinjiro choked out a laugh. "Yeah," he said, clearing his throat. "I told you, you do this crazy stuff to me. I haven't cried like this since I was a kid."

"Don't cry," Minako said. "I'm all right." Instinctively, she went to kiss him, but found that he'd shifted position. Her face bumped against his shoulder as she aimed for his mouth, and she sat back, rubbing her jaw where she'd collided with him.

"What was that?" asked Shinjiro, some of the relief fading out of his voice.

"I…I can't see," Minako admitted. "Everything's dark. I don't know where you are."

She heard Shinjiro's slow intake of breath, and felt him move against her. Suddenly and irrationally worried that he'd leave her, she clutched at his arms, and he squeezed her comfortingly, planting a rough but reassuring kiss on her forehead. "I'm right here," he told her. "It's okay. I've got you." Despite his words, his voice sounded strained. "You're alive. That's what 's important."

But, thought Minako, I'm blind, aren't I? The more she thought about it, the harder she found it to stay calm. Was this permanent? Would it fade over time? Desperately, she tried to remember exactly what Margaret had said about the kind of injuries that could come from separating the soul.

"I love you," said Shinjiro abruptly, cutting through Minako's panicky reflections.

"What?" asked Minako, caught totally off guard.

"I said," repeated Shinjiro, with just the slightest hint of embarrassment creeping into his voice, "I love you. That's what you wanted, isn't it? I thought you wanted me to say it."

"I…I did. I mean, I do. I love you too." Minako wished that she could see him. "It's just…I guess…I already knew."

"Wha-?" Shinjiro sounded flustered. "Of course you knew. I wanted you to know. So why did you…ugh." With an exasperated sigh, he said, "I thought it was important to you to hear me say it."

"I thought so too," insisted Minako. "I guess I didn't really need it. You've…you've always been good at proving it to me…especially last night." She reached up to grope again for Shinjiro's face, and felt how much warmer the skin of his cheek had grown after the last comment she'd made.

"You're impossible," growled Shinjiro. Then, in a lower, more serious tone of voice, he muttered, "Don't ever try a stunt like that again. I don't care what you think you have to do or why. I'll tell you I love you every day until you're sick as shit of the sound of my voice, if it means you won't try to leave. Understand?"

Minako let Shinjiro help her carefully to her feet. "Don't' worry," she promised him. "I'm done leaving. I'm not going anywhere now."

Shinjiro began to cough, and Minako waited, holding on to him with one arm, until the fit subsided. "You sound terrible," she said. "All of this was probably awful for you. I'm sure you're worse off now than you were."

He snorted out a laugh. "Like you should talk. Least I can still see."

Minako felt a pang go through her as soon as he said it, and the way his arm tightened around her waist informed her that he knew he'd screwed up.

"Sorry," he muttered. "That was stupid. I didn't mean it like that."

"No," said Minako, shaking her head. "No, I think you'd better make fun of it. I'm…if I'm blind, then….is that forever? I don't know what any of this means. It's not going to sink in. It's frightening, so…laugh at me. At least that'll make me feel a little bit more real and alive."

The word 'alive' brought something back into Minako's mind, and she suddenly forgot all about trying to force herself to smile. "Wait," she asked, "where's Yosuke? Where's Narukami? Did he make it?"

By way of an answer, Shinjiro took her by the shoulders and gently turned her around, guiding her forward a few paces until she could hear Yosuke's voice.

"And then," he was saying animatedly, "there was this totally crazy giant teddy bear. It looked just like some of those weird, creepy plushies that Kanji makes for his mom's store."

"Hey!" interjected Kanji's voice, sounding indignant. "My stuff's not creepy. It's cute. Right, Yu-senpai?"

"Yeah, of course it is," agreed a masculine voice that Minako didn't recognize. "But…Yosuke's right. Cute or not, a giant teddy bear would definitely be scary."

Breaking away from Shinjiro, Minako rushed forward. Misjudging how far away the voices were, she ended up plowing straight into Yosuke, who caught her and steadied her as she flailed around to regain her footing.

"Whoa!" he said. "Slow down, you're gonna hurt somebody." When Minako had sorted herself out, she heard him add, "So, you're awake. That's awesome. We were…kinda worried. No, we were really worried. Hey, everybody! Look, Minako's awake!"

Bodies began to press in around Minako on all sides, and she could feel hands clapping her on the back and reaching out to hold on to her. Uncertain which direction to turn, she called out in a voice that sounded more panicked than she'd intended, "Wait! Yosuke, where's Narukami? Is he okay? What happened to him?"

"Come on, give her some space," demanded the unfamiliar masculine voice. Slowly, the area around Minako freed up again. "Yosuke," continued the voice, " something's wrong. Look at her eyes."

"Huh?" There was a pause, before Yosuke muttered, "Yeah, wow…hey, Minako, look at me. No, at me. Dude, I'm right here."

Minako tried. She gazed over in the direction that his voice seemed to be coming from.

The unfamiliar male voice spoke again. "Leave her alone, we're just confusing her. Hey, Minako? I'm going to touch your shoulders, okay?"

"Who are you?" asked Minako.

"Oh." The hint of a smile came into the unfamiliar voice. "I'm sorry. My name's Narukami. It's nice to meet you. Hey, Yosuke, Kanji, can you push me over to Minako? Thanks."

There was the sound of something sliding against the carpeted floor, and then Narukami's hands came down on Minako's shoulders. She could feel his breath as he leaned in closer to her, apparently looking right into her face. Self consciously, she averted her eyes, even if the gesture was, at this point, an empty one.

"I'm sorry," muttered Narukami after a moment. "This happened because of me."

"Huh? What happened?" asked Yosuke.

Minako felt that it was time for her take control of the situation again. "I can't see anymore," she announced, sounding much more confident than she felt. "I…I think it's an effect of the separation."

Silence echoed around her. "No way," whispered Yosuke finally. "Wait, seriously? You can't see at all? How many fingers am I holding up?"

Minako had no idea, and she did her best to glare in the direction of his voice.

"Cut it out," muttered Shinjiro. "Can't you see she's having a hard time? There's nothing else to see here."

"An eye for an eye," said Yosuke, contemplatively. "It's like you said, after all. That's not what I wanted, but…"

"What do you mean?" demanded Minako.

"We've both lost something," said Narukami quietly. "I…don't' think I can walk anymore. Couldn't tell you why, so I won't try, but…at least we're both alive, right? I have you to thank for that."

"You have me to thank for being dead in the first place," Minako reminded him. "Anyway, it's more like 'an eye for a leg' than 'an eye for an eye,' isn't it?"

Nobody said anything for a moment. Then Narukami started to laugh.

"Yosuke's right," he said. "I think we're gonna get along great."

"Dude," Yosuke sounded surprised. "If I had said something like that you'd be all like 'this isn't the right time,' or something. How come Minako gets away with it?"

Minako tried glaring at him again.

"Okay, okay," she heard him say. "Geez, I think you being blind only makes it worse when you look at me like that…now I can't tell what you're thinking. That's…that's even scarier."

Again, the bodies began to cluster in around her, asking questions, making demands, reaching out to touch. It was alarming and unfamiliar, but Minako slowly tried to identify the voices of each of her friends. Junpei was there, hopefully recovered from the blow Shinjiro had given him to the face. Yukari kept talking over him, trying to get a word in. Akihiko was there, and so were Ken, Mitsuru, and Fuuka. Minako even thought that she could hear Kanji and Naoto chatting somewhere next to her left shoulder, and was delighted to realize that everyone who had entered the Velvet Room that morning seemed to have made it out alive. Not intact, she reminded herself. Not all in one piece, but everyone was alive.

There was one voice, however, that Minako hadn't heard. Against her better judgment, she started moving off in the direction that seemed to be away from all the voices. "Aigis?" she called out as she went. "Aigis, where are you?"

"I am here," said Aigis, and Minako heard the mechanical motion of Aigis coming to meet her. "Minako-san…I am so glad to see that the damage was minimal."

This, thought Minako, is minimal? "Yeah," she said instead, "trust me…so am I. So…I guess it's over now. It was bad, we were hit hard, but…the worst is over, and now we can relax." It would be the first time, she thought, that she'd be able to relax since coming to Iwatodai so many years before.

"I'm afraid that's incorrect," said Theodore's voice, from somewhere behind Aigis. "The worst, it seems, may still be to come."

Minako was tired. "The worst of what?" she asked, sighing.

"Do you remember what I said about the void in your mind?" asked Margaret, unexpectedly. Minako hadn't even known she was there. Idly, Minako wondered whether Elizabeth was hanging around somewhere very close by as well. "I told you," continued Margaret, "that the place where the persona once resided will now be a gap in the fabric of your mind that will attract the shadows. Where once you had the power to fight off the despair and distress that plagues the rest of humanity, now you will have a new battle to fight for the sanctity of your mind. The darkness will try to creep in, to overcome you. You must be on your guard at all times."

"Well," muttered Minako, not sure if she was being sarcastic or not, "I always love a good battle.""

"But this time," insisted Margaret gravely, "You will fight your mind without the use of your persona. You will fight alone."

"Forgive me," murmured Aigis, "but that cannot be true. Minako-san will never fight alone. I will always be by her side."

"Yeah, and don't forget about me," said Junpei. Minako turned to look in the direction that his comment had come from.

"I'm not going anywhere," growled Shinjiro, placing one arm around Minako's waist. "Fighting's what I do, anyway. Right, Aki?"

"Yeah," said Akihiko. "I mean, that is, if you think you can keep up with me, Shinji."

Slowly, one by one, each of Minako's friends added their voices to the growing litany of affirmations and promises of help. They were all around her, surrounding her, and although she couldn't immediately find them, Minako felt safer just knowing that they were somewhere by her side.

Finally, Minako heard the sound of something being shoved along the carpet, and then Narukami's voice was in her ear. "I'm sure that this will be a long road for both of us," he said. "Let's take it on together."

Together, thought Minako. What a nice change that would be from competing to see who had the right to live.

"Looking forward to working with you, Mr. Narukami," she told him, as a smile started to spread slowly across her face.

Narukami chuckled. "Call me Yu," he insisted. "We may not know each other too well, but…I have a feeling that we will pretty soon."

"Ugh, let's get out of here," said Yosuke. "I've had enough of this place for this one day."

**Epilogue**

**Epilogue – Six months later, in the Velvet Room**

Nanako stared around her with her mouth slightly open in surprise. The first time that she'd passed through here, she'd been essentially the victim of a kidnapping, and it hadn't occurred to her to look around and take in her surroundings. Was this place…a car? It looked a little like a car. It was…well, obviously moving, like a car, although Nanako couldn't really explain how she knew that it was moving. It was hard to believe that it was a car because the room was just so elegant. Cars, especially her dad's car, were usually full of junk and old, illegible documents that she no longer bothered to try and understand. This place was so pristine that it shone.

In the center of the room sat a man. Nanako had to admit to herself that he was very ugly, with a long, horrible hooked nose and large eyes that didn't seem to have to blink. She shouldn't, she reminded herself, ever think of someone as ugly. Her teacher did not like it when other students in the classroom called each other ugly. Everyone, she knew, had something beautiful about them, probably even this man.

"Welcome," he intoned, in a deep voice that didn't add at all to his appeal, "to the Velvet Room."

"Um," murumured Nanako, trying not to sound frightened, "th-thank you. Who are you?" Uh oh, she thought. That had been rude. She had to make sure not to be rude, especially to adults. "I mean," she added quickly, "uh, I'm Nanako Dojima. It's nice to meet you."

"My name is Igor," said the man who's name, apparently, was Igor. "You have been here before, Nanako Dojima. While once you came her in the flesh, I have summoned you, this time, within your dreams, to assist you in awakening to your new power."

"New power?" asked Nanako, puzzled.

"Yes," insisted Igor. "The power of persona. You are about to begin a journey, a journey to protect the future and the present of the ones that hold most dear. For that reason, you will require the aid of persona, as well as that of myself, and of my assistants."

Igor pointed to three chairs beside him, and Nanako saw that each of the chairs contained a stoic looking blond-haired individual. Two were women, one of whom was clearly lightly older than the other. The third was a man. Nanako had seen these people before, she knew, although she couldn't remember their names.

"Nice to meet you," she said to them dutifully. "Um…excuse me, but what's a persona?"

The slightly older blond woman stood gracefully up from her chair. Looking on her with the eyes of a self conscious eight year old girl, Nanako thought that she was beautiful.

"Allow me," said the woman, "to show you."

**Author's Note: **What? The author's note is at the bottom of the page, now? Yeah, I'm shaking things up a little. Wouldn't want you to get bored!

Anyway, that's the end of that story. But wait, you say! There are so many things that are still unexplained! So many questions that I still have about who, what, where, when, and why! Worry not! All (or at least, a great deal) will be revealed in the sequel, which will be called **Bondswoman**, and will begin sometime next week.

This has been really fun for me, and I hope that you are enjoying it as much if not more than I am!

**Bad Ending**

**Author's Note: **So, here's the Bad Ending. It is, for reasons that will soon become obvious, SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTER than the True Ending.

WARNING: Disturbing content including children held at gunpoint, and character death.

**The Bad Ending**

The crowd parted slightly, giving Minako her first glimpse of Junpei, who had come rushing into the room with Margaret following closely on his heels. He was saying something, but she couldn't hear him at first over the rumble of the voices that had started open his arrival. Only when Yukari stepped out of the way did Minako finally see what it was that Junpei had clutched in his arms.

"Oh god," she whispered, shaking her head as she began to push forward towards him. "Junpei, no…"

Junpei's face was flushed as though he'd been running, and the set of his jaw was grim and determined, giving him a stony, stoic expression that Minako had always associated with the times that he tried too hard to be a hero. This was, no doubt, one of those times, although for the moment Minako couldn't decided if Junpei was casting himself in the role of hero or villain. Under his arm, struggling against his grip, was Nanako. She stared around at the assembled crowd with big, terrified eyes. With his other arm, Junpei had what looked like a gun pressed up against the base of Nanako's neck.

"What the-?" Shinjiro choked out. Shoving his way through the throng, he walked up right up to Junpei and demanded, "What the hell is this?"

"Just sticking to the plan," grunted Junpei. "Just like we agreed. Things started to look bad, so I got a hostage. Now they have to let her out of it. Let's get Minako and run."

Shinjiro shook his head slowly. "You…that's not what I meant. Shit, she's just a kid. She doesn't belong here."

Junpei shrugged. "What else was I supposed to do? Everybody else just kinda gave up. I had to make a call." Turning to Yosuke, who was now bearing down on Junpei with rage in his eyes, Junpei said, "Look, okay, this doesn't have to take long. Nobody has to get hurt. You let Minako walk out of here, and we go with her. Then I'll let Nanako go. If you don't, then…well, if you take one of mine, I'm gonna take one of yours. So what do you say? Let's forget about this whole resealing thing before anything gets out of control."

Everything, thought Minako, has already gotten way out of control. There was a sickening, horrified feeling in her throat.

"I saw the car leave," Junpei was telling Yosuke. "I knew you'd kidnapped her when I saw you sneaking away from the inn in the middle of the night. You thought nobody saw you, huh? Well, you screwed up. I did. I'm not gonna let you get away with this."

"Kidnapped?" gasped Yukiko. "Oh, no, that's not…"

"You've got it all wrong," snarled Yosuke. "Nobody forced anybody to do anything. She was ready to go. It was her decision to come here in the first place ".

Junpei laughed a mirthless, angry little laugh. "Seriously?" he asked. "You think I don't know? You think she wants to do this? No, I know Minako. She's a girl who wants to live. She's vibrant, and…she's always smiling about things. She'd never just lay down and give up like this, that's not my Mina-tan. If you're not forcing her, then you're guilting her, needling her, making her feel like crap every second until she thinks she wants to do this. She thinks this is 'the best way,' right?" Suddenly, Junpei was looking at Minako. Minako moved her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. "So," finished Junpei, "you're gonna have to let her go. Your people are important to you, right? Well, mine are important to me."

Nanako whimpered against the pressure of Junpei's grip, and Shinjiro stepped forward, closing the gap between him and Junpei. "Knock it off," he muttered. "This isn't what I meant when I said 'hostage.'"

Junpei laughed bitterly. "You and I were supposed to be in this together. I thought you were gonna show up last night to help me, but you never came. Then when I saw the car leaving the inn this morning, I had to act fast, make a quick decision. Guess you're a lover, not a fighter after all." His voice was disappointed and scornful. "I don't care. Maybe you're okay with losing her again, but I'm not."

"Junpei-san," whispered Chie. Junpei turned to look at her, and swallowed hard. "Why?" insisted Chie. "Why Nanako?"

Junpei turned his head to look at Chie. "It's got nothing to do with Nanako," he began. "It's because-!"

Bang. Minako heard the gun go off before she saw anyone move. Junpei dropped to the ground, releasing Nanako and his gun at the same moment. Nanako, shrieking, ran over to Yosuke and grabbed on to him, burying her face in his leg.

In the aftermath of the shot, the room stood achingly still. Minako could see the blood gushing out of the wound in Junpei's side, as well as the still warm, smoking gun clutched in Naoto's hand.

"I…" began Naoto, "I had to…" Far from her usual, composed self, she looked shaken and distressed. "S-self defense. He had a gun."

Minako shoved through the throng to Junpei's side, tearing off the sleeve of her uniform to press it against the wound. "Junpei," she murmured urgently, "Junpei, hang in there. We're going to get you out of here."

"Nah…" Junpei's voice came out in a tortured rasp. "I don't…" Wincing, he clutched at his side, relaxing only slightly when Minako grabbed his hand with her free one and held it tightly. "Shit, it hurts so bad…"

All around them, the murmurs began. Minako didn't look away from Junpei's face, but she could imagine the expressions on the faces of both her friends, and Yosuke's friends. The murmurs grew louder, voices got raised, and hands began to fly to persona cards or to weapons that were still hung on belts or sticking out of pockets.

As Minako pressed as hard as she could against the still bleeding wound, Shinjiro knelt down next to her to pick up the gun that Junpei had dropped. He held it up, examined it for a moment, and then scowled at it. "It's an evoker," he muttered. "Not a real gun. He wasn't gonna shoot her. Couldn't have."

"How…how was I supposed to know?" whispered Naoto, who now sounded more like a frightened little girl than a confident capable young woman. "Nanako-chan was in danger. I did what I felt must be done. Any of you would-!"

Junpei rolled over and let out a groan of pain that made something in Minako's heart constrict. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I mean, about that little girl…I just…you gotta stay, Mina-tan. You can't leave…again."

"I'm not going anywhere," Minako insisted, desperate tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "I'm right here, and we're gonna patch you up and get you home, and then-!"

"Crap," muttered Junpei, his face contorting into spasm of pain. "I don't wanna die."

Then his body relaxed. Minako shoved helplessly at the wound as she watched his breathing come to an abrupt, sickening end. "Junpei," she called, "Junpei, please. It's not fair, I promised you I wouldn't go. That means you have to stay too. You have to stay with me! Please, Junpei!" Her voice rose as she called his name, and she knew that she was sobbing, screaming, talking to someone who wasn't there and wouldn't ever be able to hear her. Nothing rational mattered or made sense right now. She took him by the shoulders and shook him once, before Shinjiro reached down and managed to pry her away from the body that had once been her best friend.

"Minako-chan," said Yosuke. Slowly, painfully, she raised her eyes to meet his.

Her mind was full of emptiness and nothing. All that she could feel was a white-hot hatred, a rage and a betrayal that flowed through her and heated every inch of her blood. After everything that she had done, after all of the promises that she had made, it didn't matter. They'd taken her best friend away from her, someone who had only ever wanted to protect her from herself. Yosuke's best friend, he mattered, but Minako's…he was just collateral.

"We're done here," she bit out. "Let's go."

Turning on her heel, oblivious to everything but the pain and the anger, Minako began to walk forward out of the room. Behind her, she could hear footsteps running to catch up.

"Wait, Minako!" shouted Yosuke. "But what…what about the seal?"

Minako laughed. It was a harsh laugh, a mirthless laugh, a laugh that she'd never heard come out of her lips before. "What about it?" she asked.

Behind her, she listened the sound of her friends readying their weapons for the attack. Drawing her own naginata, she turned on her heel and stared into Yosuke's suddenly desperate eyes.


	3. Broken Fragments

**Femme Fatale**

**Author's Note: **This is sort of an AU, for readers of "What Cannot Be Broken." That story does not pair Minako and Yosuke together romantically, but what if it did? This is an alternate, Yosuke x Minako take on what could have happened during the stay at the Amagi Inn. Inspired by **Maudlin Blase!**

**Femme Fatale**

Yosuke was just coming back from the hot springs, shaking his head in disappointment, w hen he saw Minako standing in the hallway. She looked dazed and uncertain, glancing back occasionally over her shoulder at the room where Akihiko-san and Junpei were supposed to be staying. Yosuke knew that Junpei was still relaxing in the springs with Ken, and so he could only assume that Akihiko was alone. Perhaps Minako had just been alone with him as well.

As he got closer, Yosuke could hear Minako whispering something to herself, apparently unaware that there was anyone else around to hear. "It's not fair," she was saying. "If only there hadn't been so much time for him to forget…"

Time for him to forget? What was that all about? Yosuke didn't understand these strange people that Junpei had introduced him to. According to Chie and Yukiko, Junpei's friends had spent all night running around, going back and forth from each other's rooms. It wasn't just a party, it was turning into some kind of bizarre emotional orgy. Was this, wondered Yosuke, what growing up was all about? He hoped to god that wasn't the case.

Then, to Yosuke's alarm, Minako sunk down on to the floor, hunched in on herself, and began to cry. It wasn't messy crying, with big, sloppy tears and loud sobs. Instead, she was somehow crying her heart out without managing to make any noise t all. It was even more disturbing than a loud fit of sadness would have been, and for a moment, Yosuke lost track of his mission. He forgot that he was supposed to be stealthy and discreet, forgot that no one was supposed to know he was here. Instead, kindness kicked in and told him to go and be a man about it.

"Hey, hey," he said, coming to stand by Minako's side. "What's up? Hey, stop crying, you're going to make yourself sick."

There was a clean handkerchief in his pocket that he'd intended to use for cleaning up at Junes. He offered it to Minako, and she accepted it, turning her face away while she dabbed at her eyes. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "You said you didn't believe me."

"Um." That was a difficult question. While Yosuke tried to figure out exactly what lie to tell, he saw the surprise begin to turn into anger in Minako's eyes.

"You're spying on us, aren't you?" she accused him. "There's nothing for you to see here! I told you, they don't know anything about it! I'm the only one."

"Well, uh." Yosuke wanted to kick himself. He'd blown his own cover, and now he wasn't sure what to do. "When you couldn't get into the TV, I thought that maybe you were…"

"That maybe I was what?" Minako was still glaring at him. That didn't seem right to Yosuke. After all, wasn't he the one who had been wronged, here?

In a firmer, more certain voice, he continued, "I thought you might be covering for someone."

"Oh." That seemed to take Minako by surprise. "That's, um…who did you think I was covering for?"

Yosuke stood his ground. "I don't know. Who are you covering for?"

"I'm not! I mean, nobody!" Minako was adamant.

They both stopped and took a breath, apparently at an impasse. Even as Yosuke started to prepare a new line of questioning, he heard an arch little laugh feminine laugh coming from Akihiko's room. He and Minako both turned towards the sound, and he saw the pained look come back into Minako's eyes. All of a sudden, the situation made a bit more sense to him.

"There's someone in there with him, isn't there?" he asked.

Minako just nodded.

"Oh." Yosuke sighed. "Yeah, that's hard."

Shoving his now wet handkerchief into her pocket, Minako got to her feet.

"Hey, that's-!" began Yosuke.

"I'll wash it for you," she promised. "Thank you. I don't want to give you back a wet, dirty handkerchief. Look, I want to explain the stuff I said before, I think you need to know the truth about-!"

Again, the laugh came from Akihiko's room, this time accompanied by a masculine murmur. Minako winced, and Yosuke saw the tears beginning to well up again in her eyes.

Hastily, he said, "you know what, keep the handkerchief. It's not actually mine anyway, it's from work. You, um…you can tell me later. Okay? Tomorrow. I'll meet you tomorrow at Iori-san's house, and we can talk about it there."

"Not there," muttered Minako.

"Okay, then, Junes. Tomorrow night. Just…I think maybe now's not the time." He tried to smile kindly at her. The back of his mind was screaming that there was no time like the present, that this conversation couldn't wait for anyone. The even farther, more treacherous part of his mind, however, was whispering that it didn't matter anyway. Yu was dead. That wasn't going to change, today or tomorrow. Harassing this miserable girl wasn't going to change that. Nothing could.

Minako sniffled, and tried to smile. "Thank you."

Yosuke found himself wondering how a smile would look on her . Even crying, with the tears making little sparkles at the corner of her eyes, she was undeniably cute. The blue pajamas she was wearing were a good color for her, and…belatedly, he realized that her pajama top was way too tight around the chest. He hadn't even thought to look, before, and now it was too late. She'd seen him notice.

"Oh," she murmured, and self consciously crossed her arms over her top. Yosuke felt his face burning.

"I-I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't looking. I mean, I was, but, it was an accident, I didn't mean to look. They're just there, and…oh, no, that's…" This, he thought, was only making it more embarrassing.

Minako, on the other hand, didn't seem to be paying too much attention. "Oh well," she said. "At least someone noticed."

"Wait, what's that supposed to mean?" Yosuke was now getting into totally unfamiliar territory. He remembered vaguely the time that Chie had, very briefly, gotten involved with that guy Kou, on the basketball team. When Kou had dumped her after only a few weeks, Chie had gone around moping and acting as though everyone hated her and thought she was ugly, just because this one guy had turned her down. Guys, at least, didn't act like that. They knew there was more than one fish in the sea.

"Look, I'm sure it's not you," Yosuke said to the still distraught looking Minako. "I mean, I don't know what happened, and," he added quickly, "It's none of my business, but…you're cute. I mean, you're a really pretty girl." Girls, Yosuke remembered, did not always like being called 'cute.' Sometimes they preferred to be called pretty, or beautiful. It sounded more mature, although Minako didn't look as though she could have been any older than sixteen. Still, even if she was young, she'd want to feel older, wouldn't she?

"Thanks," said Minako. "That's…that's really sweet." Reaching for the handkerchief again, she wiped her eyes and gave him a grateful smile. It really was, he had to admit, a winning, attractive smile. She should smile more often. She probably would, too, if that Akihiko guy wasn't fooling around on her. Irrationally, Yosuke felt himself getting annoyed about that. Why did he feel this way? Didn't this girl have something to do with Yu's death? He shouldn't be taking her side. She was a suspect in the case. He'd enough of Naoto's detective stories to know that the detective was not ever supposed to get attached to the suspect.

Dressed as she was, with puffy eyes and her hair tied back for bedtime, Minako was an unlikely looking femme fatale. Still, there was something about her face that stuck in the mind, Maybe it was the way she puckered her mouth when she was thinking about something, or the way that…

Yosuke cleared his throat. "Anyway. Tomorrow night, at Junes, right?"

"Yeah. I'll be there. I promise." Minako nodded. "Thank you, Hanamura-san. I won't' let you down."

"Oh, please," he insisted, even as she was walking away, "it's Yosuke." Just before she disappeared back around the co rner, Yosuke found himself wondering if he could turn that rendezvous at Junes into a chance to meet for dinner.

**Cupid's Crafty Arrows**

**Author's Note: **Happy Valentine's Day! I love you wonderful readers all so much.:) Here's a little V-day present from me. I tried to incorporate as many of the pairings you requested as I could! This is very short, fluffy, and full of characters being silly and somewhat pointless. I did not attempt literary brilliance with this one.

For reference, this story takes place shortly after the events of **What Cannot Be Broken**, but several months before the events of **Bondswoman.** I hope you enjoy it!

**Cupid's Crafty Arrows**

Nanako and Teddie were sitting on the couch together at Junpei's long anticipated Valentine's Day party, while all of their friends milled and mingled about. Teddie was wearing a cupid costume, complete with bare chest and a pair of shimmery little wings that were somehow taped on to his back. In his hands was…well, Nanako wasn't sure entirely what it was. It looked like a hot pink toy bow and arrow.

"Um, Teddie" she asked. "What's that thing in your hands?"

Teddie winked at her. "I am sooo glad you asked, Nana-chan! This is my secret weapon, the love-machine 3000! With this little baby, I am going to shoot arrows love into the hearts of all of our boring old friends!"

Nanako wrinkled her nose. "That," she said practically, "sounds like it would hurt. Besides, even Dad always says no weapons in the house. It's dangerous."

"Nothing," said Teddie, leaning over to beam and sparkle at Nanako, "is as dangerous as my love for you."

Yosuke's hand appeared and smacked Teddie across the back of the head. "Yeah, you've got that right," he said, walking by with a plate of heart-shaped cookies in the other hand. "Hey, who made these? They taste kinda…"

"I made them," said Minako. Supported by Junpei, she navigated her way carefully around the sofa. "Well, at least, Fuuka and I made them together. Why? Aren't they any good?"

Hastily, Yosuke took a large bite of cookie, speaking around the mouthful. "Mmpff! Great!" Swallowing, he repeated, "I mean, they're really good. Interesting, uh, texture, ladies."

"Hah!" Chie arrived, pushing Yu's new wheelchair. "I've never heard Yosuke lie that well before…hey, Minako-chan, he must really like you. Poor you, huh?"

"Wait, I wasn't lying," muttered Yosuke, staring pointedly at the carpet. "I mean, these really are good cookies. And I don't like her."

Minako sighed. "That's too bad," she said. "I was hoping to give you this valentine I made for you…but I guess if you don't like me, that'd be a waste. I guess I'll just give it to Shinjiro after all."

As Minako started to leave, Junpei threw a malicious grin at Yosuke over his shoulder. Yosuke, waving his arms frantically out in front of him, went chasing after Minako, protesting."What? A valentine, for me? Aw, please? I'd love to see it…when I said that I didn't like you, I just meant that I…" His voice trailed off as they took the conversation into another room of the house.

"Wow, sorry," said Chie. "I wasn't trying to start anything. I didn't know he really did have a thing for her."

"Let's try not to talk about that," insisted Yu. "I don't think Shinjiro-san would like it very much."

"Yeah," agreed Chie, nodding. "He's kinda the jealous type, huh?" After a moment, she turned unexpectedly pink, and asked, in a slightly too-loud, voice, "so…how about you? Are you the jealous type?"

"Me?" Yu shook his head. "I try not to be. Why?"

"Oh, uh, no reason. I was just wondering," insisted Chie, "if it would bother you, you know, if I gave Valentine's day chocolate to anyone else. Other than you, I mean."

"Were you going to give them to me?" asked Yu.

From one of her jacket pockets, Chie produced a neat little package of heart-shaped chocolates, wrapped up in a bright green bow. "Well, only if you want them, of course," she mumbled.

Yu opened his mouth to say something as he accepted the candy, but was cut off before he had the opportunity. All eyes in the room focused on Naoto as she stalked slowly in, followed by a very nervous if deliriously happy looking Kanji.

"What…?" began Chie, stupefied.

"Wow, Naoto-kun," murmured Nanako. "You look…um…different!"

Naoto looked not only different, but also slightly shell-shocked. On her head was a bright blue knit hat, adorned with a single, well-placed white ribbon. It was an adorable hat, but so very different from Naoto's usual headgear of choice that even Nanako couldn't stop herself from staring.

"D-do you like it?" stammered Kanji. "I thought…the color…I mean, you like, uh, blue, so…"

Naoto had to think about that for a moment. "Finally, she said, very carefully, "it is pleasant, every now and then, to try something new and different. Perhaps this new…wardrobe adjustment will expand my horizons as a person." For all of that, she didn't look convinced.

Kanji, on the other hand, grinned so wide that it looked as though the smile might break the confines of his face. "I'm so happy," he said. "I'm so happy you like it. You look really, uh…cute." Saying that, he blushed and bit his lip.

"It is rare that anyone refers to me as 'cute,'" murmured Naoto. "I'm never quite sure what to make of that particular choice of adjective."

"Well I think it looks really good on you," said Yukiko, walking out of the kitchen also carrying one of Fuuka and Minako's heart shaped cookies. "You should have seen Kanji. It wasn't finished by last night, and he was up sewing all night long, just to make sure that it was finished in time for Valentine 's day! Isn't that sweet? I wish I had a man who would do something like for me…" She sighed wistfully.

"If I were you," remarked Mitsuru dryly, accompanying her out of the kitchen, "I wouldn't wait around for a man to show up. In my experience, it's usually up to the women to do most of the difficult jobs. Of course, it's tres magnifique if a man just happens to throw himself with a bouquet of red roses at your feet, but they so rarely seem to be able to take the initiative."

"Or maybe," suggested Yukiko, giggling, "they're just intimidated by you. After all, you are a pretty impressive woman. Aren't you the heir to the Kirijo corporation? You're beautiful, intelligent, you've got a wealthy, influential family...I bet stuff like that can be really scary for a guy who's trying to figure out if it's time to 'make his move.'"

"Excuses, excuses," murmured Mitsuru. "Besides, I don't remember saying that I was interested in male attentions."

"No?" Suddenly, Yukiko looked slightly awkward. She didn't' seem to be able to figure out what to do with her hands. "So you, um…you don't want a boyfriend, then? Does that mean that…"

Teddie leaned over and put a hand on Nanako's shoulder. "I think it's time," he whispered excitedly. "Time for me to try firing my first love shaft! So, who shall it be? I'll let you choose, Nana-chan. Maybe I should try to hit Yosuke first. That'd serve him right for bopping me on my poor little beary head like that…"

Nanako shook her head at him. "I don't' think you have to shoot at anybody," she remarked. "Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun as it is!"

From the direction in which he and Minako had left, Yosuke stumbled back into the room, holding his stomach and looking slightly green. Staggering over to Yu's chair, he leaned against the armrest, breathing dramatically.

Yu leaned away from him. "You're not going to be sick, are you?" he asked. "I just cleaned this…"

"No…I just…" Yosuke shook his head, then looked as though he wished he hadn't. "I just ate all the cookies. Every last cookie on the plate…I kinda wish I could throw up."

"Every single cookie?" Chie looked surprised. "But I thought you said-!"

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke. "Jeez. The things we do for love."

**A House Doesn't Make a Home**

Author's Note:This is for FlowerChild777, and readers of "What Cannot Be Broken," because this was a scene that I wasn't able to include in that story, but that several people expressed interest in. Your wish is my command!

This takes place mere hours after the ending of "What Cannot Be Broken."

A House Doesn't Make a Home

Ryotaro Dojima watched the second hand ticking slowly forward on the wall clock. It had been almost two hours since Nanako had left the house, saying that she was going to meet up with her friends at Junes. Dojima knew that he shouldn't be worried, and that Nanako often went off after school or during the break with Mei-can or Reiko-chan, or whichever other little girls happened to be the flavor of this week's friendship. Still, in light of recent events, he hated having her out of his sight. What if something were to happen? No one, perhaps, knew better than Dojima that especially at times when things seemed peaceful, danger and disaster were lurking around every corner.

Once upon a time, he thought, a magical time that seemed so far in the past, he had been a part of a family. He'd had his beautiful wife, Chisato, and his delightful little daughter Nanako. The whole future had been laid out in front of the three of them. They had been so happy together. Looking back on it, he didn't' think he'd ever appreciated that happiness enough while he'd had it. Once it was gone, it was too late, and a waste of time to think of how good things had been.

Then, not too long ago, he'd realized for the first time since the death of his wife that it was possible to have a family again. Yu Narukami, his sister's son, had come unexpectedly into their lives, and Dojima had expected Yu to leave the way he'd come, as a footnote to Dojima's otherwise unreasonably busy schedule. Instead, although no one would ever replace Chisato, Yu had become the missing part of their lives that finally brought Dojima and Nanako back together, and had turned a house that once been just a lived-in shell into a warm, companionable home.

Even after Yu had left to go back to his parents, Dojima had known that things would never be exactly the same. He and Nanako were talking again, spending time together the way they'd used to, and they both, in unspoken agreement, were waiting anxiously for the day when Yu would come back to spend the vacation with them. Yu would always, Dojima had known, be a part of their family, a necessary part that would sometimes simply have to spend time away for awhile. It only gave him and Nanako something more to look forward to together.

Then, of course, just when Dojima had finally let down his guard just enough to be truly enjoying his life, the blow had fallen, just the way it had done when Chisato had died in the car accident so many years before. One night, not too long after arriving at the Dojima residence for the winter vacation, Yu had died quietly in his sleep, of what the doctor's continued to refer to as unknown causes. For the second time, after such a short respite of joy and relief, Nanako and Dojima were again living in a broken, grief-stricken home.

Tick, Tick, Tick went the second hand on the clock. Dojima slumped down on the sofa and stared at the floor. People so often said things to him, like, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" and "It'll get easier as time goes by." That, he know, was all crap. The second time was worse. The second loss was even harder. Yu hadn't even been eighteen years old.

Suddenly, interrupting his despairing reflections, the front door began to rattle, as though someone was trying to push it open. His first, instinctive detective's reaction was to reach for his gun. Before he could do so, however, Nanako's voice came through from the other side of the door. "Dad? Hey, dad? I need help!"

Dojima moved. He was at the door in an instant, and was calling, "Nanako? What's wrong? I'm coming!" Pulling the door open, he shoved his body into the doorway and leveled his gun at whoever it was that Nanako needed to be saved from.

Nanako was struggling to get the key into the lock. Behind her stood two of Yu's old friends, Yosuke and Kanji. They were holding someone up, supporting someone between them, someone who was slowly raising his head to look directly into Dojima's eyes.

It was Yu.

"Wha…?" Dojima felt his mouth moving slowly, as his brain raced to try to catch up with his eyes. It can't be, he thought. It's impossible. I'm hallucinating. It's all been too much for me, and I've finally lost my mind. What will Nanako do now, now that her father's gone and cracked up?

"Um, Dojima-san," began Yosuke. "This, uh…"

"Hi," said Yu.

Dojima's feet were moving before he even realized that he'd given them the order. He wasn't a physically demonstrative man. He never had been, not even when Nanako had been little, and Chisato had still be a part of their lives. Emotions could so easily be taken by others as weakness, and looking weak would make him less of an authority figure, less able to do his job.

That was probably why Yu looked so surprised when Dojima suddenly embraced him in a fatherly bear-hug that sent Kanji and Yosuke stepping quickly backwards and out of the way.

"I don't…I don't understand," Dojima managed. "I saw you die. I was there in the hospital when they…when they signed the papers. This has to be a dream."

"Dad?" Nanako walked over and peered up wards into his face. "Dad, are you crying?"

"No," muttered Dojima, as a big, less-than-manly tear fell down from his eye and hit the front step with a splash. "Course not. Come here, Nanako." He moved his arm to let her in on the hug. The three of them stood there together for a moment in silence. Then, Dojima heard Nanako begin to sniffle.

"What…hey," he said, "don't you start crying too. What are we all so sad about? This is…this is amazing." He laughed, and it came out sounded like a cross between a chuckle and a sob.

"Come on, Nanako-chan," murmured Yu. "If and uncle Dojima both start sniffling, you'll have me doing it too."

Dojima heard Yosuke say something to Kanji, something that sounded like "Um…I have no idea how we are going to explain this to Dojima-san."

"Who cares?" asked Kanji. "Doesn't look like it really matters, right? Come on. Let's go."


	4. Bondswoman

**Prologue**

**Author's Note: **Welcome back to Inaba, for round two! I'm really excited about getting to write more of this story, and I will work extra hard to try and make sure that it stays fun for everybody. There will be some dark content here, but it's not going to get nearly as depressing as last time, especially since I don't have to resurrect anybody this time. Phew. I've read all of your thoughtful comments, have considered them carefully, and have subsequently made a few changes in my original plan for this story. Thanks again for all your help!

Now, please be warned, this is a **sequel** to my story **What Cannot Be Broken!** A lot of things happened in that story, and I'm afraid that this story will probably not make a lot of sense unless you've read the first one. So, here's what I suggest. If you're reading my writing for the first time, why not go ahead and read this prologue. If you like the writing style, or are interested, then go ahead and go back to read**What Cannot Be Broken**. If not, then no harm done, right?

Okay, so, I shouldn't actually be posting this chapter today. I told myself I'd wait at least a week before starting on the sequel, so hopefully I'll have enough self control to post no further updates on this story until next week. After all, I still have to type up the other ending from the last story!

Next week I'll start updating daily (or almost daily) again.

**Prologue: Six months after the resealing of the Eternity Arcana**

The warm summer evening air engulfed Minako's face as she, Shinjiro, and Junpei walked together through the streets of Inaba. Minako could hear the sounds of the festival goers all around her, laughing, talking, playing games and generally having a good, relaxing time.

"See?" said Shinjiro, placing one arm protectively against the small of Minako's back, as a group of older children ran by them laughing uproariously. "Told you I'd take you to the summer festival."

"Yeah," added Junpei," although I almost had to skip out. Daidara-san's not much of a festival guy. I told him I wanted the day off to take a friend around the festival, and he just looked at me like he couldn't figure out why that was a good excuse to miss work. Seriously, he should get out more."

Shinjiro snorted. "Never even invited you," he muttered. "This was supposed to be time for Minako and me."

"Whoa." Minako heard the slightly hurt tone in Junpei's voice. "That's cold, man. I let you live at my house, rent free, for months, and this is the thanks I get?"

Minako laughed. Reaching around until she found Junpei's shoulder, she gave it a comforting little squeeze. "Well, I'm glad you could be here," she assured him. As if in response to that, Shinjiro's arm slipped possessively down around Minako's waist and held her just a little bit closer.

Six months had gone by since she and Yu had sacrificed of piece of each of their souls in order to reform the Great Seal. After most of her Iwatodai friends had gone back to their respective homes, she'd decided to stay behind in Inaba with Junpei. Akihiko and Ken had begged Shinjiro to return with them, but, he too, opted to stay with Minako, insisting that it was now his turn to look after her the way he'd never had the chance to before.

Minako, Shinjiro, and Junpei had spent three months living in the house together, which, although fun and never boring, had resulted in several heated altercations, and had put some definite strain on the relationship between the three friends. It had been a delightful, relieving surprise when, in the mail, Minako received a letter from an organization that appeared to be called "The New Shadow Operatives," informing her that Mitsuru had purchased her and Shinjiro the gift of their own little house, conveniently placed not too far away from the local shopping district.

Minako had felt slightly guilty about that. Perhaps due to the relationship between her and Akihiko, or perhaps due to the fact that she'd always been just slightly jealous of Mitsuru, Minako's interactions with her when she'd been visiting had been strained, infrequent, and awkward. That, in fact, may have been the reason that Mitsuru had chosen to purchase the house. Minako saw it as a kind of unnecessary apology, a peace offering that Minako knew she should have been the one to offer first.

"Whoa," said Junpei suddenly, and Minako felt him grab her arm and begin to wheel her around in the other direction. "Look out, incoming!"

Instinctively, at the word "incoming,"' Minako flinched, and ducked her head.

"Arisato," came Dojima's voice from somewhere just behind her. "What are you doing?"

Minako flushed, and shook her arm free, doing her best to glare at Junpei. So that, she realized too late, was what he had meant by the word incoming. "I'm sorry, Dojima-san," she mumbled, doing her best to stand up as tall and straight as she could. "Um, Junpei was just…I mean, he told me that…" She couldn't seem to figure out exactly how to finish that thought.

"Forget it," muttered Dojima. "Don't worry about it, just go enjoy the festival. It's about time you a got a break, I guess. We've been working you pretty hard lately at the station."

"I…enjoy my work!" Minako said. It was true. She did. Still, even if she had hated her job, how was she supposed to respond to something like that?

Minako felt a small hand placed against the leg of her Yukata. "Ooh, Minako! I'm so glad you're here! Are you having fun at the festival?" Nanako sounded as though she was having a pretty good time herself. Minako could hear the big smile playing around in the little girl's voice. "There's a goldfish game! Dad says that this year, it's my job to catch one for myself, so I'm gonna win as many goldfish as I can! Maybe we can make a whole aquarium at the house!"

"We don't," insisted Dojima gently, "have enough space for that, Nanako. One goldfish will be plenty. All right, Arisato. Have a good time. Aragaki, you keep an eye on her, all right? I need her back and in one piece on Monday morning."

"Yes sir," muttered Shinjiro. Minako had always thought it sounded very strange to hear Shinjiro calling anyone "sir." At the same time, it was hard to imagine calling imposing, no-nonsense Detective Dojima anything else.

As they continued walking through the festival, Junpei said conversationally, "Seriously, Mina-tan, it's pretty impressive that you're only sixteen and you're already working as Dojima-san's partner. You must be the youngest police detective ever! Uh, except, maybe for Naoto-kun. Okay, second youngest."

"I'm not his partner," insisted Minako, "and I'm not a police detective. I'm an assistant. I get coffee, and I fetch papers. Occasionally I sit at the front desk and chat with security guards. They won't really let me do anything important, anyway, because of my eyes. Really, I'm pretty sure Dojima-san gave me the job because Nanako begged him."

"Eh." Junpei sounded unperturbed. "Just wait until you have the chance to show them what you can really do! I'm sure it's only a matter of time before you get promoted."

Minako had no interest in getting promoted, and could not imagine how she could ever qualify for a position like that. Still, Junpei's totally groundless confidence was nice to hear. "Dojima-san doesn't want a partner anyway," she told him. "I don't think that position would ever open up. He prefers to work alone."

"Good. He's kinda scary," remarked Shinjiro.

Minako turned around to stare in his direction. "That is not," she admitted, "something I ever expected to hear from you."

"What?" Shinjiro sounded offended. "Hey, what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Suddenly, Junpei's footsteps stopped. "Oh, uh," he said, sounding uncertain. "Hey, I just remembered, there's something that I have to…tell you what, I'll be back in a little bit, okay?"

"Hey, wait! Junpei!" Minako tried calling after him, but she could already hear him jogging away through the crowd. "What was that about?" she asked Shinjiro.

"Over there," Shinjiro informed her, turning her slightly. Now, she could hear the approach of wheels against pavement, accompanied by a collection of animated voices.

"Hey!" called out Yosuke, "look, it's Mina-chan and Shinjiro-san!" The sound of the wheels got much closer, as did the rumble of footsteps as a large group of people apparently picked up the pace.

"Oh," murmured Minako. "So that's why…" Ever since the incident six months ago, when Junpei had desperately kidnapped Nanako in hopes of saving Minako's life, he and Yosuke had not been on the friendliest of terms. Part of her was glad that Junpei had recognized the need to get out of the way for a few minutes. She didn't enjoy the arguments and veiled insults that cropped up between them every time Junpei and Yosuke met.

The sound of wheels stopped only a foot or so in front of Minako, and she felt a hand reach out to touch her arm. "Hey," said Yu, "I hear you're working with uncle Dojima now. How's that going?"

"Yu!" Minako was delighted. She hadn't seen him since he'd gone back home to his parents and to his school so many months ago. Yu, she knew, hadn't been able to graduate, since he'd had to spend several months at home recuperating and learning how to function again before he was able to head back to school. Still, it was summer vacation, and he'd be able to stay here for at least a couple of months before going back to the daily grind. "Oh, Dojima-san's fine. The job is…well, it's a job. How are your parents? "she asked him. "We missed you while you were away."

Yu and Minako had an unspoken understanding that neither of them would ever ask the other "how are you feeling?" or even, "how are you?" They hadn't known each other for very long, and wouldn't have described their relationship as "close." Still, there was something about going through the sort of ordeal that they had suffered. That kind of thing, thought Minako, has a way of bringing two people together. She didn't know how Yu felt about his injuries, and he would never fully understand how she felt. The one thing they both knew about each other, however, is that talking about what had happened was, and forever would be hard. There were so many new feelings and new experiences, many of which were unpleasant, that they could not explain. It was a courtesy and an expression of mutual understanding that neither of them ever asked.

"Mom and dad are fine," Yu told her. "They weren't too sure about me coming out here to visit for the break…actually, they really wanted me to stay home this year."

"Yeah," said Minako, "I can imagine.

"But you talked them into it, right?" Yosuke asked. "It would have sucked so bad if they'd made you stay home. Still…I guess most of us can drive now. Maybe next time we should come visit you."

Laughter erupted from behind Yosuke, and Minako could pick out Yukiko's crazy, infectious laugh, and Chie's sharp, high-pitched laugh, among the voices of several others. The gang must all be here, she thought.

"No way," said Yu, quickly. "Where would I put all of you? My mom would throw a fit."

They moved on together for a while, looking into booths and talking about a little bit of everything. Minako walked along beside Yu's chair, keeping one hand on his armrest to help her navigate around the festival. Even though she knew that Junpei and Yosuke couldn't possibly hang out together, she found herself wishing that he hadn't had to leave. His voice didn't' seem to be anywhere in the various crowds they passed.

"Minako-chan," murmured Naoto. "It is my understanding that you will soon be celebrating your seventeenth birthday."

"What? Seventeen?" Rise sounded incredulous. "Are you seriously the youngest one here? I had no idea."

Well, thought Minako, technically I'm three years older than I look, or even feel. Then again, Junpei would have said that Minako, having been dead for three years, was now celebrating her first year of life as a zombie. She decided that it might not be a very good idea to bring that up. "Yeah," she said, "I guess so."

"July 12," said Shinjiro.

"Hey," said Minako, smiling. "You remembered."

"Yeah. Weird, huh? I'm…not usually good with birthdays," he mumbled. Minako was touched. Lately, Shinjiro had been showing her several sides of him that she hadn't seen or expected to see before. She was sure that he'd remembered her birthday because it was important to him. She, he assured her, mostly only when they were alone, was important to him.

"Ooh, we'll have to throw a party!" announced Rise, sounding excited. "It'll be a combination 'welcome back' party for Yu-senpai, and a 'happy birthday' party for Minako at the same time! This will be so much fun!"

"Oh, but…during the summer, the inn is usually hard to get into," Yukiko reminded them. "I don't think we'll be able to have the party there this time."

"That's okay," insisted Yosuke. "We can use Yu's place. Right, partner?"

"Uh," said Yu, "I…guess? I'll have to ask my uncle…"

"Great, then Nanako-san and Dojima-san can be there too!" Chie was delighted. "We'll cook something again. Oh, maybe we can all make dinner together! It's a shame we don't have Fuuka-san this time, though. She made such a delicious cake last year…oh man, that was so good…" Chie drifted off into daydreams about food.

Fuuka, thought Minako wryly, had definitely helped with the cake, but the real hero of the hour had been Shinjiro. She took her hand off the wheelchair, and stopped to let Shinjiro catch up with her.

"Well, Shinji?" she asked. "Are you up for it?"

"Yeah, whatever," grumbled Shinjiro, but Minako knew that secretly, he was glad she'd asked.

**Chapter One**

**Author's Note:** …Tuesday counts as "next week," right? Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it does.

…Hi everybody. My name is Ari Moriarty, and I have a writing problem…

Admitting the problem is the first step, right? So, uh…what do I do next?

So, you guys expressed a lot of interest, during **What Cannot Be Broken,** in seeing much more of the P4 characters. Your wish is my command! One of the major players in this story will be…well, I'll let you read the chapter to find out.

Please be on typo alert, my computer is acting up again and inserting words where it shouldn't. If you do find misplaced words or phrases, I apologize. I will attempt to troubleshoot and address the issue for future chapters.

**Chapter One**

After getting home from the festival, Nanako sat down on her bed and thought for a long time. She was trying to decide if she wanted to tell Yu about the dream she'd had the night before.

Normally, Nanako was comfortable telling her cousin anything. He was a good listener, and he always seemed to take her seriously, never laughing at her or telling her to go and play. Yu always had great advice, and so he was obviously the person to go to with a problem like this.

The trouble was that, several months ago, Yu had sat Nanako down and explained to her that she wasn't supposed to talk to anyone about the place called "the Velvet Room." When Dad had asked her and Yu what had happened the night that Yu had come back to life, Nanako ad tried to explain all about Minako, the seal, the robot girl named Aigis, and the Velvet Room. Much to her frustration, Dad hadn't believed her. He'd been too happy at seeing Yu again to get mad, but he'd told her to grow up and to stop telling stories, and that hadn't been fair at all. After all, she wasn't telling stories. It had all really happened!

Later, Yu explained to her that there were some things that adults just couldn't understand. Someday, he promised her, he would tell her all about what had happened that night, but until then, it would be best if she tried to forget about it.

Nanako didn't like that very much, either, but Yu had looked so serious when he said it that Nanako had nodded, smiled, and promised to be careful not to tell anyone.

Then, less than a week after that, Nanako had gone with Dad and Yu to the doctors, where the doctors had done a lot of tests and had asked Yu a lot of annoying questions. Then, when it was all over, the doctors had done something that had made Nanako really, really mad

"I'm sorry," the lead doctor had said, "but we can't find anything wrong with your nephew. As far as we can tell, he isn't paralyzed or injured in anyway. If he wants to walk, then he will."

Nanako had wanted to explain to the doctor that her Big Bro was not a liar, and that something horrible had happened to make it so that he couldn't walk anymore. Instead, thinking of her promise with Yu, she had reluctantly held her tongue. It hadn't been easy.

Now, after the dream in which she'd met Igor and his three assistants, Nanako wanted to talk to Yu. She just wasn't sure if it was okay to bring it up. After all, she had promised.

"Nanako?" called Yu from somewhere in the kitchen. "Would you mind helping me with dinner?"

"Coming!" Nanako hopped off of the bed and hurried up the stairs. Yu was struggling to navigate his wheelchair through the narrow kitchen, and was apparently having trouble getting to the fridge.

"Oh!" said Nanako, dodging around the chair to get into the kitchen. "What are you making? I'll get the ingredients out for you."

"Thanks." Yu sighed, looking relieved. "Uh, I'm gonna do an omelet with fried rice. Sorry it's so simple."

"I love omelets!" Nanako beamed at him.

Yu laughed. "You're easy to please," he said. "I appreciate that."

Nanako spent some time rummaging through the cabinets and the fridge, collecting the things that Yu would need. Then they began preparing the rice together.

"Sorry to make you do all the work," remarked Yu. "I know it's my turn to cook tonight."

Nanako didn't mind. "We're a family," she reminded him. "So, we're supposed to help each other, right?"

"Right," agreed Yu, grinning. After a moment he asked, "Is your dad still at work?"

"Yeah," grumbled Nanako. "He said something came up. It sounded pretty bad." She bit her lip, and Yu squeezed her shoulder comfortingly.

"Well, when he does come home," Yu assured her, "We'll have dinner all ready for him to heat up. I bet that'll make him happy."

Nanako was sure that it would. Dad always looked so tired when he came home from work, and she didn't want him to have to do extra cooking work on top of all the stuff he did at the office. Not that cooking really felt like work, especially when there were lots of people to help out. With Yu around, it always ended up being fun.

"Hey, Nanako," asked Yu. "Are you okay? You've been awfully quiet tonight. What's up?"

This, Nanako thought, was her chance. Now she should tell Yu all about the dream, about the ugly man with the hooked nose, and the power called "persona" that he'd shown her. Yu, of course, would know exactly what to think about all of that. He always knew what to think about everything.

Still…what if he got mad at her for breaking her promise? She didn't want to make him angry, or sad, or disappointed in her. Disappointment was the worst.

"It's nothing," she told him, stifling a sigh. "This rice smells good. I'm getting hungry."

Yu laughed. "Oh, is that all? Don't worry, it'll be done soon. Then we can eat."

Yu ruffled her hair, and Nanako smiled, trying to put the strange dream out of her mind.

**The next morning, at Minako's home…**

Minako awoke in bed to the feeling of Shinjiro's lips grazing her forehead.

"Mm," she mumbled incoherently, batting him away with one hand.

Shinjiro laughed. "You're cute when you sleep," he informed her.

"Yeah?" Minako yawned. "Well you're loud when you sleep. You make funny noises and you snore all night long."

"What the-? I try to give you a compliment, and that's what I get?" He was trying to sound offended, but Minako could hear the smile playing around in his voice. "Don't think you're gonna get away with that." Leaning over top of her, he kissed her deeply. Minako let herself relax against him, and felt his breath quicken as she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him pull her over closer to him.

"I've got work,'" she reminded him, grinning at his disappointed grumble. "And you," she added, "promised me that you'd spend today looking for a job."

"Yeah, I know." Reluctantly, Shinjiro released her, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Junpei says I can't get work cause I'm intimidating. I scare away all the interviewers. Not my problem. I can't help what other people think."

Minako reached out and found Shinjiro's face, tracing her fingers along the base of his jaw. "Why don't you start," she suggested, "by shaving? That might help."

While Shinjiro headed to the kitchen to make breakfast, Minako took a shower and spent a few minutes in her closet, sorting out a skirt and blouse. "Shinji?" she called, stepping out of the bedroom. "Do these match?"

"Hell if I know," muttered Shinjiro. "Uh, it's a white shirt and a blue skirt."

That'll work, thought Minako. She sat down at the table, and heard Shinjiro clink a plate down in front of her "Eat," he commanded.

Dutifully, she forked a bite of breakfast into her mouth, and was surprised and delighted by the taste. "Oh, you made pancakes! But you don't even like pancakes."

"It's easy to make," Shinjiro explained. "Besides, you like them."

"Well, thank you." Minako tried not to shovel the food in, remembering how unappealing she'd found that when she last ate out with Chie. "Are you going to make something else for your own breakfast after I leave?"

Shinjiro took the fork out of Minako's hand, and stole a bite of her pancakes. She heard him chewing contemplatively before he replied, "Nah, this stuff isn't so bad. Anyway, I thought I'd walk you to the bus stop."

"That's okay." Minako shook her head. "You've got things to do. I don't want to put you out."

"And I," retorted Shinjiro, "don't want to sit around wondering if you got hit by a car. It'll be better if I go with you."

Minako knew that she shouldn't be annoyed. After all, he was only trying to show her that he cared, and that was important to her. Sometimes, she even found his stubbornness endearing, but now wasn't one of those times. Being chaperoned everywhere, and being helped with everything got boring and frustrating after a while. It had been six months since she'd lost the use of her eyes, and so she'd had six whole months to figure out how to function by herself without them.

"Really," she insisted. "I will be just fine walking to the bus by myself."

She expected Shinjiro to back down, but this morning, apparently, he wasn't taking no for an answer. "You can't see," he told her bluntly. "Shit's dangerous. I'm coming. Don't argue."

Minako bristled. Did he have to phrase it such a commanding way? She wasn't a child. "I am perfectly capable," she told him as firmly as she could, "of getting to the bus by myself. I do not need or want your help, Shinji."

She heard Shinjiro's sharp intake of breath, and realized too late that she'd raised her voice much louder than she'd intended. The room stood still for a moment while Minako carefully let the frustration and irritation ebb away from her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That came out wrong. I know that you want to make it easier for me. It's just that I!"

"Forget it," muttered Shinjiro. Minako could tell that she'd hurt him. He was using his stoic voice, the same voice he used when he was trying to prove that he could be more manly and unfeeling than anyone else in the room. Sometimes, Dojima-san used tones just like that when he was speaking to the new recruits, and it always made Minako think of Shinjiro, which in turn always made her smile.

"You're a good man," she told him. "Thank you for trying to help me." I'm a very lucky woman."

"Sure," said Shinjiro quietly. "Go on, you're gonna be late for work."

Minako found his face, and pulled him in for a quick kiss goodbye before she grabbed her bag and groped her way to the door. "See you later," she called as she left. "Good luck on your job hunt! Don't' worry about shopping, you can rest tonight. I'll cook."

Somewhat to her relief, she heard Shinjiro snort out a laugh just as she was about to close the door. "Heh," he said. "Over my dead body, maybe."

The bus was waiting when Minako arrived at the shopping district. She managed to catch up and get on just in time, and she rode it all the way to the police station. When she walked in, Dojima was already at his desk. She knew that because the hushed, diligent, vaguely nervous atmosphere in the room was exactly the sort of thing that his presence encouraged.

"Good morning, Dojima-san," she said, after bumping into one of the rookies on the way to his desk. "Should I make you some coffee?"

"No," growled Dojima.

That faintly alarmed Minako. "No?" she asked. In all of the time that she had been working here, Dojima had never once turned down his morning coffee.

"I'm busy," he informed her, very clearly indicating that she was dismissed.

Minako did not have a death wish. She did, in fact, put a great deal of value on her own life, and had expended a lot of effort trying to hold on to it. It was surprising to her, therefore, when she found herself saying, "Um…what's going on? Did something happen?"

She expected him to shout at her. She deserved it, after so blatantly ignoring her cue to leave him alone. She flinched when she heard Dojima swivel around in his chair to face her, and awaited the worst.

"Huh," he murmured after a long, tense moment. "Maybe you do have some detective in you after all. All right, Arisato, I'll tell you."

Minako breathed. She hadn't realized, until just now, that she'd stopped breathing in the first place.

"There's been a prison break," Dojima was saying. "A well known criminal, supposed to be locked up for life got out sometime last night, and now he's on the loose. They think he might be hiding out in Inaba, so they've got us all on high alert. Extra patrols, long hours. You're probably in for some long nights too, so I guess you have a right to know why."

"But…why Inaba, sir?" asked Minako hesitantly. "Of all the places that he could possibly run to, this seems like an unlikely one. There aren't that many places to hide in Inaba. Everyone here knows everybody else, so he'd stand out."

"Yeah, well," muttered Dojima. "He's got unfinished business here. So do I, if he's back in town."

Minako was glad, for a moment hat she couldn't see the look on Dojima's face. Something about the way he'd said those last few words made her think that the look in his eyes right now wouldn't make her feel any more comfortable around him.

"What's the criminal's name?" she asked.

"Adachi," snarled Dojima. Every syllable of the word dripped with bitterness.

That came as a surprise. Minako knew that she'd heard that name before. She was pretty sure that Adachi had been the name of the man whom Yosuke held responsible for the murders that took place in Inaba the year before she'd arrived. This "Adachi" had been, according to Yosuke, responsible for killing two women and for setting the scene for the kidnappings and attempted murders of several other people, including Yukiko and Rise. If he had broken out of prison and was back in town, then they might be in danger again, as might Yosuke, Yu, and all of her other new friends.

"How can I help?" she asked.

Dojima sounded very slightly impressed. "That's the spirit," he told her." You can get me that cup of coffee. I think I'll want it after all."

There were several more questions that Minako wanted to ask, but, this time, she did leave to get the coffee.

**Chapter Two**

**Author's Note: **A double update! Maybe I should ask to borrow my roommate's computer to type on, since mine is acting up…although if he caught me writing fanfiction, I don't' think I would ever hear the end of it. Ever. In my life. Not sure if it's worth it. Let's wait and see how frustrated I get trying to type another chapter on this one, first…

Stay tuned next chapter for the triumphant re-introduction of Yosuke's POV!

**Chapter Two**

Minako spent most of the day making phone calls on Dojima's orders. She called the police departments of various other districts, helped to convey orders to on-duty cops, and answered phones as what seemed like every single member of the Inaba population called in to announce that they had seen the suspicious man whose face was being displayed on the news.

Before she knew it, the station had gone silent, save for the clacking of the keys on Dojima's keyboard, and his occasional guttural mumblings. They were alone, she realized. Everyone else must have already gone home for the day.

"Um, Dojima-san?" Minako asked. "What time is it?"

"Huh?" A moment passed, and then Dojima said, sounding slightly guilty, "Oh, wow…it's already after seven o'clock. Nanako'll be waiting up for me. I should have called."

Minako's heart sank. "Oh, I'm sure she'll understand," she told Dojima, while wondering to herself just how angry Shinjiro would be when she wandered in after dark. He had already started to worry about her that morning, and she hadn't even bothered to phone home to let him know that she'd be late. Minako was in for it, and she knew it.

"Just tell Aragaki that I kept you against your will," Dojima said unexpectedly, interrupting Minako's depressing train of thought. "He can't argue with that. A job's a job."

"Oh!" Minako was surprised. "But, um, how did you…?"

Dojima laughed, and there was a wistful, faraway note in his voice as he told her, "I was married once too, remember? I know how important it is to keep your partner happy."

Minako knew that she was blushing bright red, despite all of her efforts to compose herself. "We're not married, "she managed. "We've only been dating a few months."

Rather than responding to that, Dojima must have picked up the phone, because Minako heard him dialing numbers into the keypad. "Hello, is this Shinjiro Aragaki? Yeah, Detective Dojima. No, she's fine. It's been a long day and she's been helping me with some phone calls. I wouldn't let her off the hook when the other guys went home, so she's still here with me, and it's getting pretty late. Could you come and pick her up? I don't want her wandering around by herself when there might be a wanted man on the loose. Sure. Yeah, okay." The phone clicked back into the stand. "That's that," Dojima said.

"You…um…didn't have to do that, sir," Minako said. She wasn't entirely sure how she felt about what had just happened. For the second time that day, someone had gone out of his way to try and make things easier for her, when she probably should have just gone ahead and handled it herself. On the other hand, this would definitely make her evening significantly less unpleasant.

"You're welcome," said Dojima. "Go on, get your stuff, you're leaving."

"What about you, sir?" she asked. "Yu and Nanako are waiting."

"Yeah, I'm leaving too, eventually," he promised. "Let me just take care of a couple of things to set up for the night shift guys, and I'll go home."

Minako found her coat and bag, and sat outside the station to wait. Eventually, she heard a call pull up to the curb.

"Get in," Shinjiro instructed her. "I asked Junpei to borrow his car. Figured you shouldn't be walking around at night with some psycho killer on the loose."

Minako climbed into the passenger seat, and soon felt the car pull away and head out onto the nearly empty roads. "But you'd protect me, right?" She teased.

"Yeah," Shinjiro growled. "But no reason to put you in danger in the first place."

"Shinji," Minako began, feeling slightly awkward that all of the necessary apologies had fallen on Dojima's shoulders, "I'm really sorry about tonight. About this morning, too. I should have called."

"I'm not angry," he said, and he sounded like he meant it. "At you, anyway. I've got a few things to say to Detective Dojima the next time I see him, though…"

Minako pictured Dojima and Shinjiro squaring off against each other. Although she knew who she'd be rooting for, she couldn't seem to decide which one of them would have the better chance of winning.

"It wasn't his fault," she insisted. "We both last track of time because of this Adachi guy. Dojima-san's really worked up about it. I think they used to know each other."

Shinjiro grunted in assent. "Yeah," he said, "They used to be partners. That's what Yosuke said, anyway."

"Partners?" Minako thought about that for a moment. "So… then Adachi turned out to be the murderer that Dojima-san was trying to find the whole time, huh? Wow, no wonder he seems so bent out of shape about it. That's…a pretty big betrayal."

They drove on in silence for a few minutes, before Shinjiro said, "Oh, do you mind if we go over to Yu's place for dinner? He called maybe an hour ago, and said that Nanako-chan's been asking about you. Figured maybe we shouldn't leave them home alone tonight, either."

"No, I don't mind," Minako assured him. "But Dojima-san will be home pretty soon, too. He's leaving now."

"He told you that?" Shinjiro asked. Minako nodded, and Shinjiro laughed. "What, and you believed him?"

Yu answered the door when Minako and Shinjiro arrived. Minako could hear the rolling of his chair wheels against the wooden floorboards before the door creaked upon. "Hey guys," he greeted them, sounding pleased. "Thanks for coming. Nanako's been talking about you all day. I guess it's been a while since she's spent any time with you."

"Minako!" Nanako came barreling out of the kitchen and threw her arms around Minako's waist. She was getting taller, Minako realized, as she leaned down to return the hug. Six months ago, Nanako hadn't been able to reach quite that high.

"Hi, Shinji-san!" said Nanako, wisely choosing to refrain from hugging Shinjiro. "I'm so glad to see you! I You haven't come over for dinner in a long time!"

"She misses your cooking," Minako told him, smiling. "And who could blame her?"

"No, it's not that," Nanako insisted, as all four of them went inside. There was a note of sheepishness in her voice that gave the lie to her words.

Yu and Shinjiro went into the kitchen, leaving Nanako and Minako to sit together at the table. Normally, Minako would have insisted on helping, although she probably would have gotten shoved out by Shinjiro anyway. Today, however, she knew that her job was to entertain Nanako while the boys got the food ready. It was a definite role reversal from the way things were in some of the households she'd heard of.

"Your dad'll be home soon," she assured Nanako. "He was just finishing up some work at his desk, but he promised me that he was about to leave."

"Oh," said Nanako, not sounding too terribly excited. "Yeah, he's been pretty busy lately. I guess it's because Adachi-san's out of prison."

Minako was surprised, and so was Shinjiro, judging by his startled exclamation. "You know about that?" she asked.

"Of course." Nanako sounded very slightly irritated that Minako would ask such a silly question. "It's all over the TV. They've been talking about him and showing his picture all day. That's probably what dad's so worried about, right? I'm not dumb, you know."

"Of course you aren't," Minako reassured her, wondering at the same time if it wouldn't have been better for Yu to have turned the TV off that day, or to try and keep her from the truth. "Are you worried?"

"No…I don't think so." There was a frown in Nanako's voice as she pondered Minako's question. "Adachi-san's a nice man. He's good at magic tricks, and he used to help me with my homework. I think he came back because he's lonely. It's probably really lonely in prison, right?"

There was no way for Minako to answer that. It seemed so strange to think of a convicted murderer as a "nice" man, and yet the thoughtful tone in Nanako's voice made Minako realize that the little girl had spent some careful time thinking about every single thing she'd just said. Hadn't Nanako been one of those endangered by Adachi's behavior? Minako could have sworn that Yosuke had told her a story about Nanako getting kidnapped and almost dying as a consequence.

"I think you're right, Nanako-can," agreed Yu from the kitchen. "He was lonely when we knew him, too."

Yu and Shinjiro arrived at the table, carrying what smelled like a steaming bowl of something. Shinjiro pressed a spoon into Minako's hand, and she therefore assumed that dinner was probably soup or stew of some kind. Either that, or Shinjiro was about to play one of those tricks on her where he tried to get her to eat something solid without a fork. He had tried things like that before, just to see what she would do. Hesitantly, she stuck her spoon into the bowl that had been placed in front of her, and was relieved to discover that the food was soupy in nature. There were chunks of meat floating around in it as well, and what felt at first like potatoes.

"Thank you very much," she said politely.

"Thank you very much, Shinjiro-san, Big Bro," echoed Nanako. "Mm, this smells delicious."

"It'll taste even better," Shinjiro reminded her, and Minako recognized the pride in his voice that always came along with watching someone enjoy his food. "Go ahead, get started before it gets cold."

As they ate, Minako questioned Yu. "What were you saying," she asked, "about Adachi having been lonely when you knew him? So," she added wryly, "was that before or after he started killing people?"

"Both, I think," said Yu, apparently unperturbed by her slightly sarcastic tone. "He used to come over for dinner a lot, sometimes with uncle Dojima, sometimes without him. I think he wanted to part of a family. He talked pretty big, always going on about how nothing mattered and you should just spend life having fun, but…he sounded pretty sad when he said it. As though it wasn't worth thinking about if there wasn't any other option for him."

"But..he killed people. He killed two people, in cold blood."

"I know." Yu sighed. "And that person, the person who killed Saki-senpai and Miss Yamano, that person is a real, living, breathing part of who Adachi is. There's someone else in there, too, though. Just like all of us have different sides, so does he. The difference is, his darker side won out in the end. Maybe he never conquered it, but I wish he'd at least been able to try. If anyone knows it can be done, then it's us.

Minako had a very hard time understanding that attitude. Murder was murder, especially calculated, planned murders, like the ones that she imagined this Adachi person committing. If he'd managed it once, what was to stop him from trying it again?

"The worst part is," Yu continued, "that I think uncle Dojima sees all of that too. They cared about each other. It was a weird sort of caring, but it was there. That's why it's so hard for him, I think. Now that Adachi's here, uncle Dojima will have to think about it again. It's hard to think about it. There are so many unanswered questions about who Adachi really is.

"So," said Shinjiro, "you don't think he's back to kill you?"

Minako could have cut the heavy silence in the air with a knife. Trust Shinjiro, she thought in exasperation, to just lay it on the table like that. Even she had to admit that he wasn't exactly the master of tact.

Yu, however, answered him levelly, as though no thing out of the ordinary had been said. "No, I don't," he replied. "But, just in case, Yosuke and the others want to meet up at Junes tomorrow to talk about it. I think Yosuke's gonna take everybody inside the TV, to see if Adachi's camping out in there. Actually, I was hoping that the two of you could come as well. Bring Junpei-san along, if he's willing."

"Junpei and Yosuke…" began Minako.

"I know." Yu cut her off. "But maybe this will be the first step to helping them put the friendship back together. Yosuke knows what it's like to lose your head to avenge someone you care about. Right, Nanako?"

Nanako pushed some stew around in her bowl. Minako could hear the spoon scraping against the ceramic side. "Uh huh," she muttered.

When she really thought about it, Minako had to admit to herself that she didn't much care for Yu's idea. Somehow, the escape of a convicted murderer, and the subsequent call to arms of his would-be victims didn't strike her as the perfect situation in which to contrive reconciliation between Yosuke and Junpei. Still, she knew that sometimes pressured situations could bring out the best in people. Of course, as it had in Junpei's case only six months before, it could also bring out the worst.

"Yeah," agreed Shinjiro, before Minako had even made up her mind on an answer. "They'll have to work it out eventually. Might as well be tomorrow. Sure, I'm in."

"Okay," agreed Minako hesitantly. "Then I'm in too, I think."

"Um…" Nanako spoke up hesitantly, sounding uncertain, as though she was expecting to be shut up or interrupted after every second word. "Are you talking about…going to the Velvet Room?"

Minako heard Yu's quiet breathing for a moment, before he asked, "Nanako…do you remember what happened last time in the Velvet Room?"

"Yes…I'm sorry." Now Nanako sounded slightly ashamed. "I know that I'm not supposed to talk about it, and I know you made me promise, but…but Big Bro, I had a scary dream."

Oh no, thought Minako. Now poor Nanako was having nightmares too. Not that Minako could blame her. The place had been pretty terrifying, and Nanako had been dragged there by a crazy, panic-stricken kidnapper.

"It's okay," Yu was saying. "I didn't mean you couldn't ever talk about it. I just don't want you to tell any other adults, in case they laugh at you or something worse. You can talk about it with me, and Minako, and Shinjiro. So, what kind of a dream did you have? Saying it out loud might make it feel better. Sometimes that's all it takes, with nightmares."

"Well…" Nanako, apparently buoyed by Yu's words, went on in a more confident tone of voice. "In my dream, I was in the Velvet Room, and I met a man named Igor."

Minako heard the sound of a fork dropping out of someone's hand, and clattering noisily on to the table.

**Chapter Three**

**Author's Note: **Hey guys! Thanks as always for your insightful commentary. I think, because of all your help, that I am finally beginning to get the hang of how this works.

So, with that in mind, it look as though we are about to encounter a polarizing issue in this story. (I stole the term "polarizing" from **SuperNova23**, I think it's perfect for this situation.) Here is a friendly disclaimer to help you decide if this is the right story for you!

Let's talk a little bit about Adachi. I am planning on portraying him, in this story, as a multi-faceted person, with numerous sides to his personality, capable of both evil and good. I'm taking a lot of my characterization of him from his social link in Persona 4 Golden, so if you haven't played through that link, you should! Or you can just youtube it. ;) Anyway, you've seen this sort of thing from me before. Aigis was a hero in the P3 games, but she, under duress, killed Yu in **What Cannot Be Broken. **Naoto, also in the Bad Ending to **What Cannot Be Broken**, killed Junpei. I like to try to flesh out characters and give them multiple facets, depending on their circumstances. I'll be doing that in this story with Adachi.

I know from your messages that some of you feel very strongly about Adachi being pure evil. That's a totally reasonable interpretation, but it's not mine. If seeing Adachi as anything other than pure evil is something that will make you unhappy, **now is your last chance to get off the boat **before I introduce him into the story. I absolutely don't want any of you to stop reading, but if you decide to do that, I understand! Before you go, though, please, scroll down through the list of reviews for this story, and check out some of the stories written by your fellow readers! Some of you who have been reviewing this story have seriously amazing fiction on this site! Maybe I'll start posting recommendations every update, for fics written by people who read this story! Oh, I like that idea….but where to start?

Oh, and PS: I accidentally lied about Yosuke's POV. Apparently that's actually the next chapter. Sorry! So, NEXT CHAPTER will reintroduce Yosuke's POV, and will also reveal what Nanako's first persona looks like!

All right, enough out of me. Here's the chapter!

**Chapter Three**

Minako went ahead and called out of work the next morning, so that she could join the others at Junes.

She hadn't expected it to be easy to get the day off, and so was surprised when Dojima let her go without a fight. "Yeah, don't worry about it," he said over the phone. "After how late I kept you last night, it's only fair that I give you a day to recover."

It was, thought Minako in some irrational frustration, not "fair" at all. It was, in fact, the very definition of "unfair," since there was no doubt t in her mind that Dojima wouldn't have let any of his other employees off of work if they had asked. She was a special exception, of course, because she was blind. Poor Minako was fragile and delicate, and had to be treated with kid gloves, not allowed to take on more than was good for her. The very thought of it made her sick. Hadn't she put in just as much work as everyone else, without complaining?

All of this speculation was, of course, ridiculous. Minako had gotten what she wanted, and now she had the day all to herself. With that in mind, she joined Junpei and Shinjiro, and the three of them headed for Junes.

The moment they walked into the food court, the atmosphere got very tense.

"Sup," muttered Junpei.

No one said anything in response, although Minako knew they were all there from the various shuffling and rustling noises she heard after Junpei spoke.

"Why'd you bring him here?" asked Yosuke finally, apparently addressing Minako and Shinjiro. "We don't need him."

"I asked him to come," said Yu. "The more people we have on our side, the better."

"But," countered Yosuke, "what if he's not on our side?"

"The hell's that supposed to mean?" asked Junpei.

Again, Minako heard shifting noises, and what she fervently hoped wasn't the sound of someone unsheathing a blade.

"Why does everyone look so mad?" asked a small female voice from somewhere near Yu. "What's going on?"

Minako was surprised. Why was Nanako here? After all, Minako and Shinjiro had been listening the night before, when Yu had made it very sternly clear to Nanako that she was not going to be invited on any of the missions with him and his friends. Nanako had insisted that she'd promised Igor to return, but Yu hadn't been willing to listen to any of it. Minako had been startled at how unyielding Yu had been, since he was normally so calm and rational about everything. Apparently, when it came to Nanako, there were some things that got even his hackles up.

"Forget it," muttered Yosuke. "Anyway, there are more important things to worry about. We all know why we're here, right?"

"It's because of Adachi," replied Yukiko. "I heard on the news that he's back in Inaba!"

"Which," argued Chie, "makes absolutely no sense. I mean, the guy hated this whole place! We figured he'd get out. Someone who can jump in and out of TVs can't stay locked up for long, but…if he had the chance to escape, why come back to Inaba? Why not just run for it?"

"There's a reason." Yosuke sounded grim. "There's only one reason he'd come back here, and that's to go after us. We're the ones who caught him, right? We're the ones that put an end to his little game. Now that he's out, he'll want to settle the score."

Yosuke, thought Minako, apparently didn't share the same feelings about Adachi that Yu and Nanako had expressed to her the night before. While Yu had described Adachi as a lonely, conflicted man, Yosuke didn't seem to have any doubt that, once he had the chance, Adachi would yet again become the cold blooded killer that the media portrayed him as. Minako wasn't sure which of them to put more faith in, although she knew exactly how Dojima felt about it, and that swayed her more in Yosuke's direction. Then again, she'd never met the guy, so what right did she have to an opinion, anyway? Either way, he sounded like bad news.

"I think it's time," Yosuke was saying, "for us to temporarily re-form the investigation team. After all, if Adachi's out to get us, our best bet is to get him first. I know I'll sleep better at night when he's locked up again."

"Uh, whoa, senpai," interjected Kanji. "With our leader out of the game, wouldn't it make more sense for us to stay away from Adachi? That guy's dangerous."

A murmur of conversation rippled through the group, before Yosuke said, sounding frankly disappointed, "I never thought I'd hear that kinda thing from you, Kanji. Normally I'm the one talking you down."

Kanji cleared his throat. "I just think," he said, "that we should keep in mind that we're not at full strength, okay? Things are different, now. Yu-senpai was always the most powerful one of us. Without him, we...might be in some trouble."

"I agree," murmured Naoto. "Adachi-san is a powerful opponent, and any anger he may harbor against us will only make this a more difficult fight. It would be wise for us to remain cautious and on the alert."

Slowly, other voices began to speak up, some in favor of Yosuke's plan of attack, others supporting Kanji and Naoto. Minako, who was beginning to feel the prickling of a headache-to-be around her left temple, had trouble keeping track of who was siding with whom.

It was Yu whose voice finally broke through the clamor. "Wait," he said. "Before we say any more about this, there's something that Nanako wants to tell you all."

Slowly, the other voices all fell silent.

"Um," said Nanako. "Um…I can do 'persona' too."

The silence became a stunned, anticipatory hush. Minako didn't understand. She was absolutely positive that Yu had been against the idea of Nanako going anywhere near the TV world. Why was he suddenly letting her speak her piece at what was essentially a council of war? After all, the girl was only eight years old. This wasn't a place where someone her age ought to be.

"Hey," Minako began, but Shinjiro put a hand on her shoulder to forestall her.

"Let it go," he told her. "I think I know what he's trying to do."

Minako had no idea what Yu was trying to do, but, hoping that Shinjiro was right in his surmise, she sat back in her chair to let Yu and Nanako finish what they'd started.

"So…I want to come with you," Nanako was saying. "Igor told me that I can use my 'persona' to help Big Bro get better. I promised that I would, and I want to! So…please, let me come with you."

"Yu?" asked Yosuke. "What…what's this all about? What do you mean? Nanako can use a persona, now?"

"Apparently," Yu told him, "Nanako had a dream the other night about the Velvet Room. With Minako and I both out of commission, there would need to be a new wild card, especially if someone like Adachi is threatening the balance of things again."

"But…but she's' just a little kid!" insisted Chie, apparently horrified.

"I am not little," insisted Nanako, and Minako smiled, despite herself, at the affronted tone in the girl's voice. "I am taller than most of the other girls in my class, and I can help. Please. I want to help Big Bro! He's always the one helping me…"

"I like her," muttered Shinjiro, just loud enough for Minako to hear. "She's got a lot of guts for a kid."

"But still…" insisted Minako. "You didn't like it when Ken joined up with SEES, and he was even older than Nanako is now!"

Shinjiro grunted in assent. "Didn't say I wanted her to join up," he assured Minako. "I just think she's impressive, that's all. So was Ken. Hell, he still is."

"Nanako, I understand how important your cousin is to you," Yukiko said, using her most rational, careful tones of voice. "It's just that this stuff is really dangerous. I'm sure Yu wouldn't want to put you in any danger. He'd probably feel even worse than he does now if something were to happen to you! He loves you so much."

"Yeah, we all do," agreed Chie.

Up until this point, Yu had been strangely silent. "Hey, come on, Yu," Yosuke said. "Aren't you gonna try and talk her out of it?"

"I think," murmured Yu, "that Nanako will have to decide for herself, after she sees what the TV world is really like."

Oh, thought Minako. The penny dropped, and everything began to make slightly more sense. Yu had no intention of letting Nanako fight alongside them. He just wanted to make sure that Nanako realized for herself how scary the shadows really were. That wasn't, she realized, a bad idea. After all, Nanako was at exactly the right age to be able to get very stubborn when she wanted to. Stubbornness ran in her family as well, if Dojima was any example. This might be the only way to really convince her that fighting shadows was a bad idea. Once she got a glimpse of one, or saw how dangerous they could be, she'd probably run screaming. Anyone sane would. That, of course, begged the question, could Minako and her friends still be considered sane?

"I agree," she said, trying belatedly to help. "I think Nanako should be allowed to decide. After all, it's her life, and it's her power."

"Thank you, Minako-san!" Nanako sounded delighted. Minako tried not to feel too guilty that she was intentionally misleading the girl into thinking that this really had her support.

No one seemed to know quite what to say for a few minutes. Minako imagined everyone looking at each other, waiting for someone to speak up and voice the thought that all of them were thinking. Wasn't someone going to object to this?

"Yosuke," said Yu finally. "And Shinjiro-san. Would the two of you be willing to look after Nanako for me? I won't be able to go in with you, so she'll need someone to keep an eye on her, during her first trip."

"Right," muttered Shinjiro. "Yeah, no problem."

"Uh…" Yosuke sounded significantly less sure about it. "Seriously, partner? You want…you want us to take Nanako-chan in there? I guess there probably aren't too many shadows around right now, but what if Adachi's waiting for us?"

"That's why she's going with you," Yu explained, and there was something of a hardness in his tone that Minako realized was evidence of the stress that he was trying not to show. "If anything goes wrong, you'll send her back out of the TV to me. I'll be waiting right here. I can count on you to do that, can't I?"

There was a brief pause before Yosuke answered. "Of course," he said, and this time, he sounded more confident. "No problem. Leave it to me."

Slowly, chairs began to push away from the table as people got to their feet. Shinjiro reached over and took Minako's hand, guiding her through the doors an into a whirring, beeping room that Minako assumed was the Junes electronics department.

"I'll be back soon," Shinjiro told her, as he released her hand. "Stay here, okay? You and Yu stick together."

"Yeah, and I call shotgun for the drive home," announced Junpei. "That means you're driving this time, Shinjiro-san."

Minako heard them stepping forward, the sounds of their footsteps disappearing one by one. They were, she realized, going inside the TV. "Wait," she called out. "Are you going to look for Adachi?"

"We just want to see if he's been in there," Yosuke assured her. "Once we figure out where he is, we'll come back out so that we can come up with a plan, okay? Don't sweat it. We'll be back before you know it."

But, thought Minako, Adachi was a murderer, a murderer who could use a persona. She hated the idea of them going in there on a scouting mission without her, to a place where she wouldn't be able to hear them if they called out for help. "Be careful," she managed to say, forcing out a smile.

"Like Yosuke said," Junpei promised her, "this'll be a piece of cake. Nothing to worry about. See you soon."

Then, all of the voices were gone, and all that Minako could hear was Yu's tense breathing from somewhere to her left.

"I cannot believe," she admonished him, "that you let Nanako go with them! If you'd told her no, she'd have listened to you! You're her beloved Big Bro! She cares about your opinion more than anything else in the world."

"Yeah," agreed Yu, his voice sounding slightly strained. "But you forget. Igor can get to us through our dreams. He can put ideas into her head. He's done it to both of us more than once, right? If I don't send her in with Yosuke now, she'll go in by herself one of these days, when I'm not around to help. What if Adachi is in there, and she goes in alone? That would be even worse. I know it seems crazy, but this is really the best way." He sighed. "I never imagined that Nanako would be chosen as the wild card. I don't' understand…why? Why her?"

Minako sat down on the floor next to Yu's chair. "A lot of things don't make sense about this. What did she mean when she said that Igor told her she could help you?"

"He may have just said that to get her interested," said Yu. "It's…the kind of thing that he might do."

"He creeps me out," remarked Minako.

Yu laughed a nervous little laugh. "Oh, yeah. Definitely. Me too."

They sat together for a moment, listening to the television monitors and various electronic equipment beeping in the stillness of the otherwise blessedly empty department store.

"So...what do we do now?" asked Minako. "We just wait?"

"Yeah," agreed Yu. "I think that's all we can do."

Minako let out a long, impatient breath. She hated this. The waiting game was one of her absolute least favorite games; especially when there could, potentially, be lives in danger just beyond her reach.

**Chapter Four**

**Author's Note: **Double update again! This evening's double update is brought to you by the fact that I have a terrible cold, and had to skip out on rehearsals tonight! Also, Benadryl makes me a little loopy. Not sure why, but I've encountered some students over the years who have the same problem. I know it puts some people to sleep, but for the chosen few, it's really more of a stimulant…

I invented a persona! I checked first to make sure that no persona already existed with this name. If I made a mistake about that, then…the internet lied to me, therefore I deny all responsibility.

Anyway, we're back to the Velvet Room, a place that exists somehow within the persona' user's mind. Note: Just like in the last story, this is the part of the story where I make a lot of new things up! Please bear with me and prepare to suspend your disbelief!

**Chapter Four**

Yosuke led the newly re-formed investigation team into the Velvet Room, where Igor, of course, was expecting them. Margaret, Elizabeth, and Theodore were all seated next to him.

"I had so hoped you'd come," Igor told Nanako. "This will not be the first time that we have met in person. Always a pleasure, of course, to see you again."

Minako was right, Yosuke thought. This guy was seriously creeping him out. For some reason, listening to the way he was talking to Nanako made Yosuke's blood start to boil. If Yu had been here, they'd have…but, wasn't it Yu who had sent Nanako in with hem in the first place? Yosuke still wasn't sure how he felt about that.

"Have you decided," Igor was asking, "whether or not to accept the challenge that we have set before you? Without you, it is likely that your friends will be forever lost in the fastnesses of their own minds."

"No pressure," muttered Yosuke sarcastically. He felt it was time for him to intervene. "Look," he told Igor, "this is ridiculous. Nanako is way too young to take on something like this. If there's a job that needs doing, we can handle it ourselves. Just…just leave her out of it, okay?"

Igor turned his large, probing eyes on to Yosuke, sending a little shiver down Yosuke's spine in the process. "Forgive me," he murmured, "but I fear that you are not capable of wielding the sort of power required for this particular mission. This will require…a certain level of skill that you do not possess."

Somewhere behind Yosuke, Kanji snorted a laugh. Yosuke tried not to blush with embarrassment.

"What the hell," he muttered. "How can a little kid be more 'skilled' at using a persona than me, huh?"

Igor inclined his head in Nanako's direction. "Show them," he instructed her.

"Um….okay." Nodding slowly, Nanako gradually pulled a persona card out of the pocket of her jumper. Yosuke stared at it in disbelief.

"Wait," asked Yukiko. "Nanako-chan, have you had that this whole time?"

"Um…I guess so." Swallowing, she added, "I wasn't hiding it…but you didn't ask me. So…"

"Now, Nanako," insisted Igor.

Nanako held up the card. "P-persona," she mumbled.

Something shot out of her and alighted on the floor just a few feet in front of Yosuke. It was a tall, scrawny-looking, bare-chested boy, with golden hair, tanned skin, and a pair of magnificent man-made wings sticking out from either side of his back.

"His name is Icarus," Nanako told them. "Igor says that he's a fool, but…I don't think that's a very nice thing to say about anyone."

"Wow," said Chie, staring in amazement as Icarus began to flex his wings back and forth. "I've never seen that one before…I don't think it was one of Yu's."

"Icarus," Igor informed her, "is not available through any fusion or combination that has yet been tried. He is a unique persona, born from the thoughts and feelings of the person who wields the wild card.

"I know this story," murmured Naoto. "Icarus comes from an old Greek mythological tale, the story of a boy who flew too close to the sun, and fell down to earth again when his wings began to melt from the heat."

"Uh…is that supposed to mean something?" asked Kanji.

They all stood for a moment, their eyes fixed on Icarus, until Nanako's voice broke through the silence.

"I wish," she said, looking thoughtful, "that he would wear a shirt. He might catch a cold otherwise."

With that, Nanako tucked the card away, and Icarus shot back into her, leaving the rest of the investigation team still standing there, blinking at her in awe.

"What?" asked Nanako, looking worried. "Don't you like him? Are you mad?"

"Nana-chan," whispered Teddie. "You're amazing…"

Yosuke shook his head, trying to clear it of the spectacle that they'd all just witnessed. There was a reason that they were in the Velvet Room today, and Nanako actually wasn't part of it. "Hey, um, Igor," he said, feeling somehow strange that he only knew the man's first name. "Maybe you can help us. We're looking for someone named Adachi. He's a persona user, and we think he might have escaped in here to try and dodge the police. Have you seen him?"

"Hmmm…Adachi…" Igor looked thoughtfully over at his three assistants. "I cannot say the name is familiar to me. Margaret? Do you remember a guest of ours who went by the name Adachi?"

Margaret nodded once. "Yes, sir. Tohru Adachi; the pawn chosen by Izanami, to enact the murders in the human world."

"And he's been in the TV world recently," added Rise. "He's not there anymore, but…things have changed. Kouzeon can feel it."

"Ahhh, yes…" Igor pursed his lips for a moment. "It has been more than a year since that individual has come through this door. I'm afraid that we cannot help you."

"Oh. Well. Thanks anyway." Yosuke turned around and prepared to leave the Velvet Room, but was stopped by the sound of Nanako's voice.  
"You told me," she was saying to Igor, "that I could use my new power to help heal my Big Bro. How?"

"Nanako-chan," said Naoto, "we should be going."

Nanako, however, did not seem to be paying attention. "I want to know," she insisted to Igor, "what I have to do. So, show me. It's only fair."

Igor shrugged. "Very well," he said. "If you wish. Theodore?"

Theodore stood up, and crossed the room to a place on the wall where there was suddenly a large, glowing door, standing very slightly ajar. Yosuke was almost positive that the door had not been there moments ago, or else he was sure he would have noticed it. The door had five large locks on it, each with two keyholes . It was, Yosuke realized, the same door that they had all passed through six months before; the door into Minako's mind.

"Nanako," he said quickly, "don't go in there." Although he wasn't sure why, Yosuke had a very, very bad feeling about whatever lay behind that door. The last time they'd opened it, several people had almost died. There was no way Yu would want Nanako going anywhere near that place, even if the resealing process had long been over.

"There is no need for fear," insisted Theodore, beckoning all of them over to the door. "The danger is gone from this place. Come…we have even further in to go this time."

Theodore passed through the door, and before Yosuke could get his hands on her, Nanako walked in behind him. Cursing himself inwardly for being a terrible guardian, Yosuke hurried to catch up with Nanako, assuming that the rest of the team would follow suit.

Minako's nightmare world looked very much the same as it had the last time Yosuke had seen it. The towering spiral staircase was still there, leading up to a tightly shut door that Yosuke knew must still open on to the Great Seal that consisted of one piece each of Yu and Minako's souls. This time, however, on either side of that door, there were two other doors. One had what appeared to be the image of Izanagi floating in front of it, while the other displayed the blurry, floating image of Izanagi-No-Okami.

"Wow," muttered Yosuke sarcastically, under his breath. "Subtle."

Chie gasped. "Look!"

Yosuke followed her gaze, and saw the shadow, sitting on its haunches just outside the Izanagi door. It was a massive shadow, with great dark protrusions coming out of the sides of its face, sort of like misplaced horns. As the team watched, the shadow began to tear and rip at the door, apparently trying to break it out down or claw through it in order to get inside.

"Do you remember," asked Theodore, with an almost disturbing amount of calm in the face of the shadow's ferocity, "when we instructed you that the loss of the persona would attract the attention of the shadows?"

"Shit," said Kanji.

"Precisely," agreed Theodore." The shadows will soon begin to prey on the minds of your friends, filling the void where the persona once lived with despair, self doubt, and all manner of unfortunate human emotions.

"So," growled Kanji, "all we have to do is kill the shadows before they get in, right? Piece of cake."

"Both sanctums," remarked Theodore, "have already been breached on more than one occasion."

"So, we go inside, and then we kill the shadows." Kanji shrugged. "Still, not a problem. Let's start with this one."

"Whoa, whoa, no way!" Yosuke stepped frantically in front of Kanji as Kanji's persona card came out. "Hold on, we are just here on a scouting mission. We're supposed to be looking for Adachi, not fighting shadows inside somebody's nightmares. Nanako is not getting involved in any fighting, okay? Yu would kill me. He'd kill me."

"So, what, we're just gonna let that thing eat Minako's brain?" Kanji sounded frustrated. "Come on, senpai, we've got a job to do here!"

"It's not a zombie, it's a shadow. It's not eating anything. There are no brains here. This is a…a sort of, um…ugh, I can't think of what you call it."

"It is a projected representation," Theodore chimed in, "of the inner workings of the mind."

"Right. So. You can't eat it," finished Yosuke. Then, he sighed. "Look, I wanna get rid of this thing as much as you do, but I don't think either Minako or Yu would be too happy to be alive if they found out that we got Nanako-chan killed to save them, okay? So let's get out of here, we'll bring Nanako back to the food court, and then we'll come back and in and take care of the-!"

Behind him, Yukiko gasped. Yosuke whirled around in time to see Nanako staring contemplatively at her persona card, her eyes glassy as though she was in some kind of thoughtful daze. "Persona," she murmured, and Icarus came shooting out of her.

"No," muttered Yosuke. "No, no, no. No. NO." Instinctively, he positioned himself in front of Nanako, in between her and the shadow, which, apparently sensing the arrival of the persona, had suddenly looked up from the door and was now slowly, menacingly lumbering towards them.

"Oh god, Yosuke, what do we do?" asked Yukiko, who had turned white as soon as she saw the shadow bearing down on Nanako.

There was only one thing left to do, Yosuke realized. "Kill it," he commanded. "Kill it now."

Mere moments after he finished his sentence, a burst of flame rocketed out of Icarus, and Yosuke barely had time to get out of the way. Having missed Yosuke by a tiny margin, the flames engulfed the oncoming shadow, and incinerated it almost instantaneously.

"Wha…holy…" Kanji was standing, staring at Nanako with his mouth hanging open.

Nanako, on the other hand, didn't look too good. "Oooh," she murmured, swaying slightly as Icarus disappeared again. "Feeling dizzy…"

Naoto managed to dodge around and catch her before she hit the ground.

"Shit," said Kanji again, and this time, Yosuke had to agree with him.

**Meanwhile, outside of the Electronics department…**

"Oh." Minako blinked. The headache that had been creeping up on her for the last hour or so seemed to have suddenly gone away. Without pain, she realized, reveling in a blissful moment, she never would have had the wonderful peace that came with the absence of pain.

"What's up?" asked Yu.

"Nothing, I just…my headache's gone, that's all. Um, how long do you think we've been waiting out here?"

"It's been exactly one hour and forty six minutes." Yu sighed. "You were right. This was a terrible idea."

"Hate to say I told you so," shrugged Minako. Then, feeling that perhaps she'd gone a little too far with that last comment of hers, she reached over and groped for Yu's chair. After finding the armrest, she located his hand, and squeezed her hand comfortingly around his. "I'm sure," she began, "that Yosuke and the others will be more than a match for-oh!"

For just one, remarkable, breathtaking moment, Minako could see. There were colors al around her, lights, images, and the one thing that stood out the most prominently was the startled look on Yu's face, as Minako saw it, up close and in person, for the very first time.

Then, everything vanished, and she was inside herself again, engulfed in darkness.

"Minako?" Yu was calling urgently for her, sounding distressed. "Minako, what happened? What's wrong?"

There was, for a moment, no answer to that question. Minako wasn't sure that she was breathing in the aftermath of that sudden, visual shock. "I…I know what you look like," she said finally. "When I touched you, just then, I…I don't know. I saw your face. Did you…feel anything?"

"No…" Yu sounded slightly disappointed. "But, try it again."

"What, try touching you again?" Minako felt her fingers, now closed around Yu's wrist. "I am. It's not working anymore. I guess…maybe I imagined it."

"Can you remember," Yu asked her gently, "anything about what my face looks like?"

Even though the glimpse had been so brief, Minako knew that she was unlikely ever to forget the only glimpse of the world that she'd gotten in six months. "There's a pink sparkly band-aid on your cheek," she informed him.

Yu laughed. "Yeah...there is. It's one of Nanako's. I cut myself shaving this morning." There was a moment's pause before he added, in a slightly puzzled tone, "You weren't imagining it, Minako. You couldn't have been."

"Then…what was that?" Minako found herself getting frustrated. "What just happened? And how can we make it happen again?"

"I don't know," murmured Yu. "I'm sorry."

**Chapter Five**

**Author's Note: **There are a lot of important points touched on in this chapter. I enjoyed writing this one. Some of the stuff in the middle was inspired by the moment in P4, when Kanji gets mad about how the media is treating Mitsuo Kubo.

This weekend, I'm gona be busy as heck, so I probably won't be able to update. If the chance arises, I'll take it, but please don't actively expect another update until Monday evening.

Thanks so much for bearing with me, and I'll see you all again on Monday night!

**Chapter Five**

Minako was just beginning to get really worried when she heard the clatter of footsteps in front of her, as the investigation team piled out of the TV.

"Nanako!" exclaimed Yu. "What's wrong? What happened to her?"

"Relax, quit freaking out," insisted Yosuke. "She's fine. See, she's starting to wake up already. Nothing happened, she just…passed out, I guess. Maybe she was tired."

"Right," murmured Yu. "The TV world is hard for children to take. Even now, maybe the air in there is still toxic to her. I should never have let her go in there in the first place. This is my fault."

"Uh..." Yosuke sounded uncertain. Well, okay, maybe, but I don't really think that was it…listen, I think there's something you need to hear."

While Yosuke explained to Yu what had happened inside the TV, Minako tried to locate her friends. "Shinji?" she called. "Junpei? Where are you?"

"Here," said Shinjiro, resting a hand on her shoulder blade. "We're both fine. It was no big deal."

"Then why did Nanako pass out?" asked Minako."Did you find Adachi? What did Igor say?" Minako had hundreds of questions. If only, she thought, she'd been able to go with them.

Junpei laughed."Hey, hold on! Breathe, okay? We'll tell you everything."

They did so. Minako listened with rapt attention while Shinjiro and Junpei explained all about the surprise emergence of Icarus, their conversation with Theodore, and the shadow that Nanako had defeated in Minako's nightmare world. When they were finally finished, Minako breathed out a long, frustrated sigh.

"So, it's not over," she muttered.

"It is for you, man," insisted Junpei. "You're not going anywhere near those doors. Just leave it to your old pal Junpei, okay? I've got your back, and I'll get rid of all those shadows for you, so all you have to is sit back, relax, and prepare for my victory!" After a moment, he added, "Hey, Shinjiro-san, what's with that dirty look you're giving me? That's scary. No wonder you can't find a job."

"It's nothing for you to worry about," Shinjiro told Minako, apparently ignoring Junpei's last remark. "There's no way I'm gonna let you get hurt again. We'll take care of it, I promise. Just…try not to think about it."

How, wondered Minako, was she supposed to do that? Shinjiro and Junpei had just told her that there were shadows in her mind, and that all of her friends were putting themselves in danger in order to make sure that no harm came to her. One of those friends was, in fact, an eight year old girl with no previous battle experience who might very well die at the hands of some shadow in the process of trying to protect Minako's psyche. While they all risked themselves for her sake, she was absolutely powerless to help them, and yet, somehow, she was supposed to just try to forget this? There was absolutely no chance, she knew, of that happening.

"Maybe," she began, "I can help. I've fought a lot of shadows with both of you over the years. I know what they look like, what their weaknesses are, and stuff like that. If you can show me a picture of the shadow, or even just describe to me what it looks like, maybe we can analyze it together and figure out a battle strategy."

"Nah, Rise-chan'll do that," said Junpei. "Just make sure you let us know if you start getting headaches again, okay? I bet those headaches happen when shadows are attacking."

Minako had a new kind of headache now, and she was almost positive that this one came from stress rather than from any sort of shadow activity. "There must be something," she began, "that I can do. I can't just sit here while you all-!"

Yu's voice cut through the chatter of the group, interrupting Minako mid-sentence. "I'm taking Nanako home," he announced. "She's exhausted. She needs to rest. We can talk more about all of this tomorrow. Thanks for your help, everyone."

"I have to work tomorrow," Minako reminded him.

"Oh, that's all right," said Yukiko. "We'll come over tomorrow night and fill you in."

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke."Honestly, we need you to look after Dojima-san. He's probably tearing his hair out over this Adachi thing. The poor guy is gonna be a mess. Keep an eye on him, would you? He could probably use an extra pair of hands around the station."

The group began to disband, with everyone except for Junpei and Shinjiro going off in their separate directions. Minako nodded encouragingly to herself as she watched Yosuke walking away. He was right, of course. Maybe she wasn't much help against the shadows, but at least in the human world there were still things she had to do. With that in mind, she let Shinjiro lead her back towards the car, resolving in her own mind to head over to the police station later that night, to check up on her beleaguered boss.

**That evening, at the Dojima residence…**

Nanako, now fully recovered, was sitting on the couch, watching TV with Yu. Yu had been very quiet every since they'd first gotten home, and Nanako was starting to get a little upset. He must, she knew, be very angry. What she didn't understand was the reason why. After all, hadn't Yu told Nanako that it was up to her to decide whether or not she wanted to use her persona? That thing inside the Velvet Room hadn't been all that scary, really. Okay, maybe she had been a little bit scared, for just a moment, but…not really. Not a lot. Not…too much. In any case, Yu had given her full permission to go into the Velvet Room with his friends, so why would he be angry now?

"I'm really sorry," she said, for what felt like the one hundredth time. "I didn't mean for Icarus to shoot fire and stuff. It just sort of…happened. He was the one that did it, not me. It wasn't my fault." After a moment, she added, in a much more hesitant, slightly hopeful voice, "Um…you're not going to tell Dad, are you?"

Unexpectedly, Yu laughed. "No," he assured her, "I am not going to tell him. I'm not angry, either."

"You're not?" Nanako was puzzled. If he wasn't mad, then why was he being so quiet?

"No, I'm not," Yu repeated. "I'm scared, that's all."

"Ohh," murmured Nanako thoughtfully. She knew what it felt like to be scared. She'd been scared quite a lot since Yu had moved in, and the terrible and dangerous things had started happening in her home town. Scared was a feeling she knew what to do with.

"Don't worry," she told Yu. "Everyone gets scared sometimes. It's okay to be scared. I promise, I won't tell anybody, either."

Yu smiled. "Thanks," he told her. "But…do you know what makes me scared? I'm scared of you getting hurt. I'm scared of losing you. It's a different kind of scared."

"Oh," said Nanako again. "So, like, the kind of scared that I get when Dad's out catching the bad guys, and he doesn't come home for a long time, and the bad guys have guns."

"Yes." Yu nodded slowly, looking slightly sad. "So, you do understand."

Nanako hated the idea of Yu being sad, and so she decided it was time to change the subject."Look!" she said. "Adachi-san's on TV again!"

A news program had come on, and Adachi's picture was now flashing across the screen, just below a headline reading "Convicted Inaba Murderer Breaks Out of Jail! Local Panic Ensues!"

"Big Bro," asked Nanako, "how come they never use Adachi-san's first name?"

Yu glanced over at her in surprise. "Hmm?"

"Well," she said, "when he's on the news, they always call him 'the Inaba murderer,' or just 'Adachi.' He had a first name too, right? So why doesn't anyone ever say it?" To herself, Nanako wondered if it was because Adachi-san was famous now. Rise Kujikawa was always just "Risette," because she was famous. Maybe famous people could only have one name. It would, of course, be easier to be famous if your name was shorter and easier to remember.

"Real people," explained Yu, "have more than one name."

"Except Teddie," realized Nanako.

"Yes, except Teddie," Yu agreed. "Anyway. No one wants to think of Adachi as a real person. Murderers aren't people, they're monsters. Monsters don't need two names."

"He drew me a picture once," insisted Nanako." Monsters can't draw pictures, and they can't do magic tricks. Monsters aren't real."

Yu gave her a hug.

"You're right," he said. "You're absolutely right. Now, come on, it's been a long day and it's time for bed."

**Meanwhile, at the police station…**

"Dojima-san?" Minako carefully pushed open the door to the station, and stepped inside. "Dojima-san, are you in here?"

There was no response, although she could hear the clicking of a keyboard somewhere that led her to believe Dojima was still hard at work. Carefully, aware that the rookies had a tendency to leave things lying around where she could trip on them, Minako followed the sound of the typing.

"Dojima-san," she said again, when she'd finally located his desk, "it's really late."

"Huh? What are you doing here, Arisato?" Dojima sounded slightly unsteady, and Minako found herself wondering, even though she hoped she knew better, whether or not he had been drinking. "Go home. There are people waiting for you."

"Shinj knows that I'm here," she promised. "And there are people waiting for you, too, you know. I went over to your house last night after I left work, and I was there when Yu had to put Nanako-chan to bed. It was after nine o'clock. She wanted to wait up for you, but she could barely keep her eyes open."

The typing finally stopped. "Jeez," muttered Dojima.

"Maybe I can help," insisted Minako. "We can get it done faster with two people working on it."

Dojima snorted out a derisive laugh. Minako could smell the alcohol on his breath now. He was drunk. "What are you gonna help with?" he asked her. "Don't need any phone calls made, and can't drink any more damn coffee. Go home. There's nothing for you to do here."

"But," Minako began.

"Home, Arisato," bellowed Dojima. "That's an order."

Minako slunk out of the station, and back on to the street, trying not to think about how miserable she felt. It had not exactly been a triumph of a day. First, she'd discovered that nobody cared whether or not she showed up at work. Then, she'd had to watch her friends all traipse off to fight the shadows together, risking her lives to protect her while she'd sat around doing nothing. After forcing herself to keep her chin up throughout all of that, she'd gone to the police station to try to help Detective Dojima, only to discover that he really did think of her as nothing more than an essentially useless coffee girl. On top of everything else, there had been that moment, that terrible, wonderful moment that she still wasn't sure if she'd imagined or not. Had she really been able to see Yu's face, or was that just desperate, wishful thinking on her part? If it had been real, then how could she get it back? If she could only find a way to see again, all of the other stuff would start coming together. There would be a place for her again if she could see her way clear to finding it. It was almost nauseating, being so close and having just one moment of clarity, and then not being able to even figure out how to get it back again.

"I really am no use to anyone, huh?" she muttered, allowing herself a moment of what she considered to be well-earned self pity. "Not even to myself."

The worst of it all was that she knew her friends weren't wrong. She really was helpless. She couldn't even file papers without help from someone who had a fully functional pair of eyes. Even the blindness wouldn't have bothered her so much if she'd still been able to use her persona, but that wasn't an option anymore either. Once upon a time, she'd had a purpose, even a destiny, and the ability to protect people, save lives, and change the world. Now, although she may have managed to get her life back, there didn't seem to be anything worthwhile that she could do with it. She was, in fact, a worthless lump of pitiable half-person, forever being protected and prevented from getting into trouble.

"Maybe," she mumbled, with all the bitterness of hyperbole, "maybe I should have just died and become the seal after all. Then, at least, I'd be doing something useful."

Lost in her own frustration, Minako didn't realize how long she'd been walking. She heard the car horn a moment too late, and jumped back in alarm just in time to feel herself being whisked backwards off of her feet by an unfamiliar hand.

"Whoa there," said a man's voice, one that she didn't recognize. It sounded slightly muffled, as though it was coming through a scarf or the collar of a heavy coat. That seemed strange to Minako in the middle of the hot summer weather. It was also a slightly older voice, belonging to a man somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, perhaps. "Another second and you would have been road kill. What, are you blind or something?"

"Yes," said Minako, bluntly. She wasn't in the mood to try and be polite.

"What? Really? Oh." The man sounded surprised. "Well, I guess that's okay, then."

Minako bristled. "Because I'm blind, it's okay that I almost got hit by a car?"

"That's…not exactly what I meant." There was a rustling sound, and when he next spoke, his voice was clearer, no longer muffled by whatever had been blocking it before. "Sorry, I was thinking out loud. Anyway, you should get home. Haven't you heard? There's a murderer on the loose. It's not safe for a girl on her own at night."

Minako sighed. The realization had begun to dawn that this mysterious muffled stranger had probably just saved her life. "Um…no, I'm the one who's sorry. Thank you. Thank you for helping. I wasn't paying attention. Do you, uh…could you tell me where I am?"

"You're right outside the Shiroku Pub," the man informed her.

"Oh," she muttered. "Sorry. I must have interrupted you in the middle of enjoying the fascinating Inaba nightlife."

The man laughed. "You think so too, huh? This place is a drag. I was just in that pub, and there wasn't a single person in there I felt like talking to. I'm not from around here, and every time I come here I'm amazed by how boring the damn place is. What do kids like you do for fun here, anyway? There's gotta be more to it than just hanging around Junes all day."

Minako shrugged. "I do whatever my friends tell me to do. I'm barely even allowed to go out on my own. Something might happen to me." She knew that she was being unfair to Shinjiro and the others. They were only looking out for her well being, and they genuinely wanted the best for her. Once she'd started speaking, however, the words kept flowing out of her, released from the dam of self control and politeness that had been holding them back all this while. "You said it yourself. It's not safe for a girl to be out alone at night, especially a blind girl like me."

"Yeah? You know, you don't seem so helpless," said the man. "What's your name, blind girl?"

It was not, Minako knew, at all wise to give personal information to strangers. At the moment, however, she didn't care. It felt good to be doing something that she wasn't supposed to do. "I'm Minako," she said. "What's your name?"

A brief moment of silence passed, before Minako heard the man say, almost cautiously, "Uh, Tohru. I'm Tohru."

The name sounded slightly familiar, as though Minako had heard it before sometime very recently. Idly, she wondered if perhaps one of the other employees at the police station was called Tohru. After all, it was a pretty common name.

"Nice to meet you," she told him.

**Chapter Six**

**Author's Note: **Awesome, I seem to have the rest of this hour to myself. I'll type this chapter up, then. With any luck I'll get it done before my rehearsal starts.

Haha, on a side note, you know how in the last chapter, Minako almost became road kill? Yeah, well, eerily enough, the same thing happened to me this morning…only, I was paying attention. The walk signal wasn't working and I had to make a run for it. I didn't time it well, and came really, really close to getting run over. I'll take that as a sign that I have to post a chapter today.

**Chapter Six**

"Shouldn't you be getting home?" asked Tohru. "Your parents are gonna get worried about you."

"I don't live with my parents," Minako said. "I…live with my boyfriend."

"Wow," replied Tohru, with a nervous sort of laugh. "Jeez, you should have seen the look on your face when you said that. Trouble in paradise, huh? Well, you're young."

Minako didn't enjoy being belittled like that. She would have been almost nineteen, she knew, if only she hadn't been dead for three years. "How old are you?" she demanded.

"That's kinda forward," retorted Tohru. "Anyway, I'm a lot older than you."

"Oh yeah?" Minako frowned. "How old do you think I am?"

"Hmm…" Tohru pretended to think about that for a moment. "I don't know, twelve?"

Minako opened her mouth to protest, and she must have looked offended, because Tohru burst out laughing. "No, I'm only teasing," he assured her.

"I'm seventeen," Minako informed him, not quite truthfully. After all, she told herself, she was only rounding up by a few days.

"Seventeen huh?" Tohru sighed. "Still in high school. That's too bad."

"What's too bad?" insisted Minako.

"Nothing," replied Tohru cryptically. "Well, I can't just leave a high school kid here by herself. You might walk into traffic again. IF you don't want to go home, then you can come with me. I'm going down to the flood plain. At least the scenery there is nice, unlike the rest of this dump."

"I don't even know you," Minako reminded him.

"I know," he said. "That's what makes it interesting. I should warn you, though, that I'm not much into babysitting. If you fall into the river or something, you're on your own."

Perfect, thought Minako. Finally, someone who isn't going to isn't going to insist on holding my hand while I cross the street. "I don't need a babysitter," she told him. "Fine, I'll come."

**Meanwhile, at the Dojima residence…**

Nanako was just starting to doze off when she heard the front door open. Struggling out of the covers, she padded downstairs just in time to see her dad wearily dumping his bag on the sofa.

"I'm home," he mumbled.

"Dad!" she called out happily, throwing herself into his arms.

"You," he informed her, giving her a quick squeeze, "should be in bed. Were you waiting up for me?"

"No," said Nanako.

"But she tried to," said Yu, as he wheeled himself into the living room. "We both stayed awake until nine o'clock last night, hoping that you would come home."

Dojima sighed. "Yeah, I know. Arisato told me."

The three of them went into the kitchen, where Nanako found herself immediately eyeing the refrigerator. There was an uncomfortable rumbly feeling in her stomach.

"Can I have a snack?" she asked.

Dad laughed. "You're always hungry. Sure, go ahead."

While Nanako rummaged around to locate the fruit slices that were hopefully still left over from last night's dinner, she listened to her dad and her cousin talking together.

"So," Yu was saying, "you talked to Minako."

"Yeah," muttered Dojima. "She came by the station. Said something about wanting to help me get my work done. I…I shouted her out. I'd been at the booze, and…" He shrugged. "Guess tomorrow I'll have to apologize. "

Nanako knew what it felt like to have Dad shouting at her. She felt immediately sorry for poor Minako. It had been very nice, though, for Minako to try to help with Dad's work. That didn't seem like a reason to get angry at someone, but sometimes Dad could be unpredictable when he was drinking. Most people, Yu had explained to her once, were unpredictable when they drank. She'd seen that sort of thing on TV, too.

"You know," continued Dad, "I think her injury's been harder on her than she wants to admit. She's a good kid, but…she's struggling. You know I don't usually ask you about the night it all happened, and I'm not gonna start now, but...if there's ever anything you want to talk about, I'll listen. Okay?"

Yu smiled. "I'm fine, uncle Dojima. Really."

"Are you sure?" persisted Dad. "I mean, you can't use your legs anymore. You never complain about that. I know it must be tough for you. I don't want you to feel like no one notices."

"Honestly," Yu repeated, "I'm okay." Something about his smile, Nanako thought, didn't look quite right, though. If he really was okay, why did his eyes look so sad?

"Well...if you're sure." Dad gave up. "I'll clean up here. Nanako, finish your snack and go back to bed. I'll see you in the morning."

Nanako dutifully gave her dad a kiss on the cheek, and hurried to do as he asked. Just before she left the room, however, she took a quick look over her shoulder, and saw that Yu was biting his lip while gazing down thoughtfully at the armrest of his chair. There was something in his expression that she didn't understand, but knew she didn't like.

**Moments later, at the flood plain…**

Minako sat down next to Tohru on the riverbank. Together, they listened to the little sounds the water made.

"This is kinda nice," Tohru said. "I guess it's not a bad idea to just relax like this sometimes. Maybe I didn't realize how nuts everything has been lately until just now."

"Is your job stressful?" asked Minako. "Are you taking a vacation in Inaba? The Amagi Inn is famous for their 'relaxing hot spring experience.' At least, that's what they say on all the commercials."

Minako could have sworn she heard a little shudder in Tohru's voice as he replied, "Nope, I'm not staying at the inn, and I don't think I will be anytime soon. I'm actually here to see someone. Or, maybe, it's more like I'm here to find out about someone."

"To find out about someone?" Minako was puzzled. "I don't understand."

"It's…complicated. I don't really get the whole thing myself." Tohru sighed. "I read in the paper that someone I knew had died. It was here in Inaba, so I came to check it out first-hand. Of course, that was six months ago. It wasn't easy to get away."

"I'm sorry," murmured Minako. "Was it someone you were close to?"

Tohru kicked a foot out into the river, making an audible splash. "I don't' think so," he told her. "Maybe. I'm not sure. This guy and I, we had a lot in common. A kindred spirit, I guess you might say. Not all the time, though. I mean, sometimes the guy just drove me crazy. He was so stupid about things, idealistic, always talking about 'the power of friendship,' and 'doing the right thing.' He sounded like an after school special."

Minako shrugged. "He sounds like a nice guy."

"Yeah," agreed Tohru, and this time there was a bitter, derogatory note in his voice that Minako hadn't heard there before. It startled her. "He was a nice guy, and I bet that's what got the dumbass killed in the end. You can't just go through life expecting to find good people and opportunities around every corner. The world doesn't work that way, and if you try to take it that way you'll just end up getting yourself hurt. Or dead, I guess, in his case. Anyway, I don't' really know why I came here. It was just a feeling I had, like I needed to come. Don't ask me how that makes sense."

Almost buried beneath the wry bitterness in Tohru's voice was a level of sharp pain that Minako couldn't help but recognize. "No," she assured him. "I think it makes sense. You want to know if you were right about him."

"Huh?" Tohru shifted next to her on the bank, and a little bit of soggy, sandy stuff crept on to the hem of her skirt.

"You say he was a stupid idealist," Minako elaborated. "If being idealistic got him killed, then you were right all along. That's why you're here. You want to know."

"So, it's an 'I told you so' kinda thing." Tohru sounded impressed. "I don't know, maybe you're right. Maybe not. I don't actually know why I'm telling you all of this. Like you said, I don't even know you."

"And like you said," retorted Minako, "that's what makes it interesting. It's easier to talk to strangers."

"Yeah," agreed Tohru. "And you're a good listener. You've got one of those faces, you know? The kind of face that makes people just want to spill their secrets all over you." Under his breath, he muttered, "I guess I need to be more careful."

"Sorry?" asked Minako.

"I was just thinking, you probably get this sort of thing all the time." He laughed. "I bet it's annoying as hell, having to listen to everybody else's damn problems."

Minako couldn't reasonably argue with that. "It is," she admitted, "but it's nice to be helpful." That was true, she realized. It was a good feeling, finally being able to finally do something for someone else.

"You sound like him," Tohru was saying. "I don't know what they're teaching kids these days. Back when I was a kid, cynical was in. We all know what the real world was gonna be like. I guess lots of people had older siblings. Do you have any?"

"No," confessed Minako. "No brothers, no sisters, and my parents are dead. They've been dead for years."

"Oh, right, you said you live with your boyfriend." Tohru sounded thoughtful. "You know, this is starting to seem like a bad idea after all. You really shouldn't be out here alone with me. If you had parents, they'd have taught you to stay away from strangers. Especially strange, older men. Actually, my parents never taught me that, but it's different when you're a guy."

"Don't worry," Minako assured him, "my boyfriend takes care of all of that. He's overprotective enough to make up for a whole extended family. Besides, you don't seem so bad to me."

For some reason, Tohru didn't say anything for a moment, and Minako thought she could hear his slightly tenser breathing in the stillnesss of the night air. Then, finally, he told her, "You really have no idea. I told you already, you can't just assume things about people like that." Suddenly, he stood up. "You need to go home," he said firmly. "It's late. Seriously, get out of here. You should never have come out here with me in the first place. You're just lucky I'm not some crazy serial killer."

Minako heard his footsteps receding, and scrambled to her feet. "Tohru-san!" she called, but there was no response, and before long she couldn't hear any signs of him at all.

What, she wondered, had that been all about?

As she made her way, slowly and hesitantly back through the streets of the shopping district, Minako did have to admit to herself that all of this had been an absolutely terrible idea. Not only was she now not even certain she'd be able to make it back home, but Tohru had been right about the advisability of being out late at night with a man she had never met before in life. What if he'd ended up being the killer? She was stupid, stupid, stupid.

Still, hours later, as she finally reached out and found herself holding her very own doorknob, Minako found herself wondering how long he'd be staying in the area. She'd never asked him if he'd found out what he wanted to know about this friend. When he did, would he leave?

Shinjiro was waiting for her in the kitchen when she walked in. She half expected him to be angry, but he just sounded tired as he asked her, "Dojima-san kept you this whole time? Doesn't he ever sleep?"

"Um," muttered Minako. "I…"

"Forget it," said Shinjiro. "You look beat. Go get some rest."

The two of them got into bed together, with Minako feeling more than just a little bit guilty about letting Shinjiro assume the best of her. Then again, she hadn't actually done anything wrong, had she?

Then, she wondered, why was she so glad that he hadn't asked her where she really was?

**Chapter Seven**

**Author's Note: **Hey guys! Thanks for being patient with me this weekend. It was one of the busiest weekends I can remember, and I owe it to you for standing by while I took care of things. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

This chapter has Yosuke in it! I love chapters that have Yosuke in them. Huzzah.

Also, please keep on the alert for typos. I am…honestly barely unable to keep my eyes open right now, and I am certain that at least one or two errors will sneak by.

**Chapter Seven**

Minako's brain burned. She woke up with a fiery pain in her right temple, searing viciously through her ability to concentrate. Desperately, she tried kneading her head into the coolest corner of the pillow, hoping that it would assuage some of the pain, but that didn't really help.

"Hey." Shinjiro's hand was against her forehead, and she could feel his breath on her face as he leaned in towards her. "Headaches again?"

"Yeah…" She tried to nod, but moving her head suddenly seemed like a terrible idea. "It's really bad…"

Next to her, Shinjiro pushed off the covers, and she heard the sound of his feet as they hit the floor. "I'll get the pain medicine," he mumbled, still hoarse from sleep. Minako wondered if she'd woken him when she began to toss and turn from the pain.

"Shinji," she called out, "its okay, I'll get them!" There was no response. He must, she realized, have already the left the room.

Alone in the bed, barely able to complete a coherent thought, Minako tried to force herself to remember what had happened the night before. There were scratches on her arms and legs, and a bruise on her shoulder. How had they gotten there? Had she gotten into a fight? No, she remembered groggily, that wasn't it. She'd wandered into a thorn bush. Actually, she realized, as recollection began to dawn, she'd walked into several prickly plants, as well as a number of other things on her way back from the riverbank. It was amazing that she'd managed to make it back in one piece.

That was an exhilarating thought. Despite everything, despite all her inabilities, Minako had gotten from the riverbank to her own doorstep entirely unharmed, except for a couple of bumps. Maybe she was getting the hang of things after all. Never mind what her friends said, she was about as self sufficient as it got, maybe even more so than most people she knew, who would have gotten lost in the dark on a night like last night.

Again, a scorching pattern of pain rocketed through her temple. "Ow," she whimpered. "Shinji…"

There was a rattling, and then a faint crashing sound from the bathroom next door, indicating that Shinjiro may have gotten frustrated while looking for the pain meds. Only a few moments later, she felt a weight on the bed, and he pressed a couple of pills into her outstretched hand. "Here. Just two, right?"

Minako nodded, and swallowed the pills gratefully. It would take a while, she knew, for the medicine to kick in. "Thanks," she muttered. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up."

"You didn't," Shinji told her. "I was up already. Yosuke called this morning. He wants to meet at Junes in an hour."

Minako sighed. "Why so early?" she asked. "Doesn't make a difference in that world what time we go."

"Dunno," said Shinjiro. "Maybe he's got work today."

Work, thought Minako. Belatedly, and somewhat guiltily, it occurred to her that she'd never asked Shinjiro about how his job hunt had gone the other day. "Hey," she began, "weren't you going to-!"

Shinjiro cut her off. "Don't have to," he insisted. "I already found something."

Minako was surprised. "You did? That's wonderful! Why didn't you tell me?"

There was a very slight pause, so short that Minako wasn't entirely sure she hadn't imagined it. "We've been busy," Shinjiro explained. "I forgot about it. Anyway, I start next week."

Something about the way that Shinjiro said those last words alerted Minako that everything wasn't quite right. "Start where?" she asked.

"Uh, actually, at the police station," muttered Shinjiro. "They needed a new security guy for the night shift. It works out. This way, you won't be walking home alone at night anymore."

Very slowly, Minako took a long, deep breath. I will not, she told herself, start shouting.

"So, is that why you took the job?" she asked, doing her best to keep her voice calm and level. "So that you can follow me home every night and make sure I don't step in a hole and fall over? Or so that you can keep tabs on what I'm doing, and who I'm seeing? You know, just to make sure that I'm not going anywhere I shouldn't, or trying anything that might be too hard for me?"

"Minako," began Shinjiro warningly.

Minako ignored him. "Do we even need another security guard? Was there even a position available, or did you and Dojima –san create one between you, to make sure that I had someone to keep an eye on me? That works out beautifully for everyone, doesn't it? You get a new job, and Dojima-san doesn't have to lose sleep at night, worrying about the paperwork he'd have to fill out if, god forbid, I broke a nail on the job."

The rage was beginning to build now, for all of Minako's best efforts to keep her temper at bay. How dare Shinjiro try to interfere with the one place in her life where she was really starting to make herself useful? True, not as useful as she'd like to be, especially if Dojima-san had anything to say about it, but…at least she was making an effort. Now Shinjiro wanted to step in? He would probably spend the whole day following her around, making sure she didn't hurt herself, or try to lift anything heavy. She could, although she knew that it was in the hyperbole of frustration, even imagine him dogging her footsteps from room to room, holding his arms out on both sides to make sure that his poor, crippled girlfriend didn't have a chance to walk into another on her way through the station.

"You were the one," muttered Shinjiro desperately, "who wanted me to find work in the first place."

Minako sighed. "Yes," she agreed. "I wanted you to find work so that we could turn this into a real relationship, with both of us as equals. We said that we wanted to make something out of this, to have all of the things that we didn't think we were ever going to be able to have together."

"And I don't want o risk losing that," insisted Shinjiro. "I can't risk losing you. I don't understand why that pisses you off so much."

"I know." Minako's headache was throbbing dully now, pounding at the edges of her mind. "I know you don't understand, and that, that is what pisses me off."

It was time, she decided, to get out of the house. It was suffocating in here, and she was beginning to feel more and more trapped the longer this conversation went on. She didn't want to hurt Shinjiro, didn't want to yell at him or be cruel to him, but he was smothering her, and his presence right now was only making her feel worse.

"I'm going," she told him. "I'll see you tonight."

Sliding off of the bed, she grabbed a handful of clothes out of the closet, hoping against hope that they ended up being a set that she could reasonably wear to work.

"Here," began Shinjiro, reaching for the clothes. "Let me-!"

Minako snatched them away from him. "I've got it," she told him, coldly.

**An our or so later, at the Junes food court…**

Yu had been talking with Yosuke about Junpei.

All of the others, of course, had tried before. Yukiko, Chie, Rise, and even Kanji had encouraged him to see reason, to accept the fact that Junpei's gun hadn't been a real gun, and so he couldn't possibly have ever meant to hurt Nanako. He'd been scared, they kept insisting, and he'd made a mistake.

Yosuke, however, didn't see how threatening the life of a small child was a mistake. He wasn't ready to get over the fact that Junpei had pointed a weapon at the head of someone he really, truly cared about and wanted to protect. There was no, he told them firmly, getting over that sort of thing, and he was a little freaked out that they had managed to move past it so easily.

He'd still been fully comfortable and settled in that frame of mine several minutes ago, when Yu had pulled him aside to talk.

"Listen," Yosuke had said. "There's nothing you can do to change my mind. I hate the guy's guts. He can't be a part of the team, and if Shinjiro-san brings him today, I'm telling him that he's out. That's all there is to it."

"Yeah, okay," Yu had said, with one of his easygoing little shrugs. "I was just thinking, you know? What Junpei did to save Minako. Wouldn't you have done the same thing for me?"

Yu had left it there, and hadn't brought the topic up again or even asked Yosuke for a response, but somehow, Yosuke now felt a little bit foolish. The fact was that Yu, as usual, wasn't wrong. There was pretty much nothing that Yosuke wouldn't do or have done for his partner, and if it had been Yu's life on the line, Yosuke couldn't say with a straight face that he wouldn't have resorted to underhanded tactics. Hell, he'd almost willingly sacrificed the life of someone who he admired and respected in order to get Yu back. Minako had been ready to die so that Yosuke could save his partner. If there hadn't ended up being another way out, Yosuke probably would have let her do it.

So when Junpei and Shinjiro walked into the food court together this time, Yosuke made a conscious effort to look the other man in the eye. He didn't want to. He would never like or enjoy working with Junpei. Still, Yu had made a good point.

"Sup," said Junpei, jerking his head in Yosuke's direction.

"Hey," said Yosuke.

Junpei's eyes widened in surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he had the chance, Shinjiro interrupted.

"There's something wrong with Minako," said Shinjiro, looking frustrated and worried. "She's acting weird."

"What do you mean?" asked Yu. "What kind of weird?"

"Dunno, just…just weird," replied Junpei with a shrug. "She's moody all the time. This morning, Shinjiro-san says she shouted at him, and then I saw her walking down the street with a bright green sweater and a pink skirt on. Had to send her back to home to change, and when I offered to come and help, just as a joke, she snarled at me. That's…that's not our Minako. She's usually much cooler than that."

"I'm sure," murmured Yukiko, "that Minako-chan's having a very hard time lately. She has a stressful job, and it has to be hard trying to accomplish everything with her disability. Remember, she's not used to being blind, and it's only been six months. She's probably really struggling."

"Yeah, but…" Junpei exchanged a look with Shinjiro. "What if it's more than that? Remember what Theodore said about the shadows behind that weird door? What if it's getting worse in there and it's starting to really mess with Mina-tan's head?"

Shinjiro nodded. "She's been having those headaches again," he informed them.

Yosuke glanced over at Yu, who nodded. "I think," Yu said, "that it's worth looking into. I'd like to see what it's like inside my door as well. At least…" For a moment, he looked frustrated. "I'd like you to see."

"Oh, then count me in," said Junpei. "We're going in today, right? Great, then let's do it, before it gets any worse. You should have seen the look on her face today, when she walked out of the house. It was pretty scary, man. You gotta take my word for it."

Yosuke did not, in fact, have to take Junpei's word for it. The beleaguered look on Shinjiro's face told Yosuke everything he needed to know about the state Minako was in.

"Hey, uh, guys?" Kanji tentatively put up a hand to get their attention. "Don't you think we might be overreacting here? I mean, moody, angry, difficult…uh, doesn't that sound like something that girls do sometimes, you know, during a certain time of the month…"

Yosuke tried not to stare at Kanji in disbelief as Rise, Yukiko, Chie, and Naoto all turned around in their seats to glare daggers at Kanji.

"Wh-what?" asked Kanji, leaning away from them in surprise. "What did I say?"

"So," managed Yosuke, clearing his throat. "It'll be me, Junpei, Shinjiro-san…and we need a healer. Yukiko, are you in?"

"Definitely," agreed Yukiko, with a determined look on her face. "I'm ready."

"What about Nanako-chan?" asked Teddie, speaking up for the first time. "Shouldn't we bring her along? After all, she is pretty powerful…and so cute when she fights!"

"No," said Yu firmly.

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke, "there's no need for that. And quit hitting on Nanako, Teddie. It's gross. She's not even ten. Chair or not, Yu can probably still beat you up if he wants."

"Probably?" asked Yu.

**Chapter Eight**

**Author's Note:** Okay, so, the next two chapters were difficult to write. I actually had to rewrite both of them multiple times. It was a bit of a headache, but I think I'm satisfied now with what I've turned out.

A question for you all: Can anyone tell me what the horse shadow at the beginning of this chapter is representing or implying? It's a tricky one, I grant you…think of the phrase "get off your high horse."

Also: Yes, Minako IS behaving like an idiot with massive character flaws, and YES, I am doing that intentionally! The shadows in her brains, of course, are really not helping… I'm kind of enjoying the contrast between Yu's very sort of zen, mature nature, and Minako's fiery temper. We're gonna have a lot more fun with that later. Oh, and, uh, you all read the summary for this story, right? So we're not going to have anybody going "whoa, wait, Minako x Adachi? What? NO WAY!" Cause…it was totally in the summary. I'm just sayin'.

And finally, many of you have mentioned the fact that Yu seems to be having a much easier time of it than Minako! You're right! Yu is not having that hard of a time _yet._ Don't' worry, I'm an equal opportunity character torturer, and I haven't forgotten him. The plot point that triggers his trouble is still a little ways off…

Oh, and by the way: **WARNING: The following chapter contains potentially disturbing content including aggressive physical behavior. You have been warned.**

**Chapter Eight**

Yosuke, Shinjiro, Junpei and Yukiko, accompanied by Rise, walked into the Velvet Room, aware that Igor was watching them with his usual amount of slightly too much interest.

"Welcome," he said, "to the Velvet Room. Are you here on behalf of your friends?"

"Yeah," muttered Junpei. "We're all ready to kick some brain-eating shadow ass, so let's do this."

Again, thought Yosuke idly, with the brain-eating thing. And what was with this guy's bravado? Didn't he ever just answer a question?

From her seat by Igor's side, Margaret said, "I'm glad you've come. There's something you need to see."

Rise remained behind, a few wary feet from Igor's chair, while Margaret led the others over to Minako's nightmare door.

"I have a bad feeling about this," muttered Junpei. "When even she looks worried, you know there's something about to go down. I mean, what exactly are Margaret and Elizabeth, anyway? They're not human. Hot, yes. Human, no."

"I am flattered," murmured Margaret, in a flat, completely disinterested tone of voice.

Junpei flushed pink. "Wait, she can hear me?"

Before Yosuke even had a chance to respond, Shinjiro went ahead and did it for him. "Shut up," he growled.

They went through the door, and were soon standing in front of the two doors marked with Izanagi and Izanagi-No-Okami. This time, there were no shadows visible outside either of the doors, and that, at least was something of a relief to Yosuke, who had half expected to be ambushed the moment he walked into the room.

"Through here," said Margaret, gesturing at the door to Minako's mind. "There has been a breach in the sanctum, one that is greatly troubling. We would like you to handle it."

"Guys?" Suddenly, Rise's voice was in Yosuke's mind, and she did not sound happy. "Guys, no matter what you do, do not go through that door. There is something…something awful on the other side, and you do not want to be anywhere near it."

"Something 'awful?'" asked Yosuke. "Can you be a little more specific?"

"It's…pulsing," said Rise, sounding uncertain.

"Pulsing," repeated Yosuke. "That is not helpful. What does that even mean?"

Shoving forward past the others, Shinjiro put his hand on the door."I'm going in," he muttered.

"Yeah," agreed Junpei. "If there's something 'pulsing' and 'awful' in Mina-tan's head, then we're here to take it out! Just call me 'the exorcist.'"

"That's not what 'exorcist' means," insisted Yosuke. "Besides, Rise just told us that-!"

It was, of course, too late. Together, Junpei and Shinjiro had already shoved open the door, and all four of the team members stepped back as they caught their first sight of what was lurking inside.

"Oh," said Junpei. "Oh, shit."

The shadow was huge. It wasn't just huge; it seemed to be growing, and taking up more and more of the room the longer that Yosuke looked at it. It was shaped like a horse, with a huge, rearing head, and hoof-like shapes around where its feet would be, which looked as though he could do some serious damage. Rise had been right, thought Yosuke. The thing was pulsing, radiating waves of orange and violet, giving off a strange sort of sickening metallic glow as it stood there, staring at them, and preparing to make its first move.

"Go!" said Rise, urgently. "Run! Don't' be stupid, senpai! That thing is way more than you guys can handle!"

Yosuke looked around at the stunned faces of the other three members of his team. Junpei and Shinjiro could make their own decisions, but Yukiko was definitely his responsibility, and he had to get her out of there before anything bad happened. If Rise said that the shadow was too much for them, she was probably right. Yosuke had learned a long time ago that trying to play the hero was more than likely to get both him and the rest of his friends killed.

Junpei, however, didn't wait for his word. Apparently ignoring Rise's warning, he pulled out his evoker and fired, releasing his persona and a subsequent agidyne attack that engulfed the shadow horse's head in a ring of flames. Unfortunately the fire seemed to have no effect at all, and soon flickered out, leaving the shadow totally unharmed and even more enraged than it had been the moment before. It pawed menacingly at the ground with its two front hooves.

"Move," insisted Shinjiro, elbowing Junpei out of the way. Planting himself squarely in front of the shadow, he, too, called forth his persona and drove a powerful axe blow at the enemy. Without so much as flinching, the shadow horse deflected the blow, sending Shinjiro stumbling backwards, cursing under his breath.

"Hey!" Rise was now almost screaming inside their heads. "What is going on out there? I told you already, you're not going to win! Stop playing heroes and get out there before someone gets hurt!"

"Nothing's working," said Yosuke. "Rise, what can we use against this thing?"

"Didn't you hear me?" I said nothing! Nothing is going to work! I can't figure out how you're supposed to hit it."

"You never said that!" insisted Yosuke. "That would have been really good to know before we started attacking it!"  
Rise was annoyed. "I tried," she reminded him, "to warn you, but noooo, nobody wanted to listen to me…"

The shadow horse reared up on its hind legs, and kicked out at Shinjiro, who, still recovering from being knocked back, couldn't dodge, and only managed to block the main force of the blow with his left arm.

While in the process of curing Shinjiro, Yukiko remarked, "Hey, Rise, Yosuke? I don't want to interrupt, but now doesn't seem like the right time for this…"

"We're going back," Yosuke shouted, and, grabbing Yukiko by the wrist, he made for the door. Behind him, he heard Shinjiro grunt in angry surprise as Junpei, apparently having reached the same conclusion, started dragging him along behind. The hooves of the horse were now loudly audible against the ground, and they were out the door and closing it behind them just in time to turn around and see the shadow horse rearing up on its hind legs with a deadly glint in its terrible yellow eyes.

Then, the door was shut, and they heard the shadow pounding forcefully against it.

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

Finally, Margaret broke the stunned silence. "So," she said matter-of-factly, "you see the problem."

**That evening, at the riverbank…**

Minako left work early, aware that Dojima was unlikely either to notice or care. From the moment she'd left the house that morning, she'd had one thing on her mind, and it was still at the forefront as she hurried along the flood plain down towards the riverbank.

The night before, she'd met someone here who she had felt really needed her help. Maybe it had only been because he'd seemed lonely, and needed a stranger to talk to, but there had been something about the pain in his voice that had stuck with her and haunted the back of her mind since they'd met. Tohru, she knew, wasn't the kind of man to follow a woman around and breathe down her neck all the time. He wasn't, as he had put it, a "babysitter." At the moment, he was the only person in the world that she could think of wanting to talk to, and the closer she got to the riverbank, the more she hoped she'd find him there.

Minako wandered along the bank for several minutes, starting to wonder if maybe it was foolish to look for him here, when really, he could be anywhere in Inaba, or even in another part of the country by now. It was with relief, then, when she finally heard a familiar sigh.

"Oh," muttered Tohru. "It's you again. Momoko, right?"

"Minako," she corrected him doubtfully. Something didn't sound right about the way that Tohru was talking. There was something cold in his voice that she didn't recognize from the night before.

"Yeah, right, Minako," said Tohru dismissively. "Anyway, what do you want?"

"Um." Minako wasn't sure what to say. This man seemed like a totally different person from the one she'd been picturing in her mind all day. The voice was the same, but now it had a harsh, bored, bitter quality to it that jangled Minako's nerves and made her feel unexpectedly small and uncertain. "I was hoping I'd find you here," she began.

"Yeah?" asked Tohru. "Why? I told you last night, didn't I? You shouldn't be here."

"Then why," insisted Minako, "did you ask me to come out here with you last night?"

"Can't you guess?" sneered Tohru. "Come on, give it a try. Here, I'll even give you a hint. You're a cute teenage girl, in a short skirt to boot. So, what do you think I was thinking about when I asked you down here? I figured you might be a good time if I got you alone, but…I ended up getting bored with you after all, so I left. I guess that makes you a lucky girl."

Minako was both sorry and glad that she couldn't see his face. On one hand, she was sure that his facial expressions would make him much easier to read, while on the other hand she guessed that there was nothing on his face right now that would make her feel any better. "You're lying," she murmured, shaking her head. "You were never going to hurt me."

"Oh yeah? You sure about that?" Suddenly, Tohru's hands were tightening around Minako's waist, and she could feel his hot breath close against her face. She knew that she should be frightened, should scream out for help, but somehow all Minako felt was the certainty that something was still very off about Tohru. He was so much colder, so much crueler than he'd been the night before. It was such a sudden, drastic change, almost a caricature of a movie villain, or the antagonist from a teenage girl's most terrifying, sex-ed induced nightmare. It was too menacing. Somehow, it almost didn't' feel real.

She decided to take a chance.

**Chapter Nine**

**Author's Note: **This chapter. This. Chapter. I cannot begin to tell you how aggravating this chapter was to write. I've actually rewritten it, from scratch, six different times.

For one thing, Adachi is a hard character to write. For another thing, this scene was really difficult to convey with absolutely no visual cues or description whatsoever. For a third thing, every time I work on it, the song "Madness" by Muse plays in my head. You should go ahead and listen to that if you really want to get the full feel of this chapter.

I must move on with my life. If I do not finally post this thing, it may drive me to distraction. Please be gentle, this time, with your reviews. Remember, all of us are still a work in progress, and so, unfortunately, is this chapter.

In other, much better news, I got to meet and talk to four readers last night who had never reviewed the story before! It's always delightful to hear from you guys. Thank you!

So, my students have informed me that tomorrow is Valentine's Day! I'm going to write a fluffy, romantic little one-shot for V-day, but I'm not sure what to write about. What are your favorite Persona pairings?

**WARNING: This chapter contains a situation that almost turns into a rape. There was no way around it. If I want to access Adachi's better nature, I'm going to have to deal with his awful parts first. Anything else would be cheating.** **Obviously sexual assault is a truly horrible unpardonable crime, and it will not be seen again in this story. You have been warned.**

**Chapter Nine**

Taking a deep breath, Minako called his bluff.

"You're overdoing it," she informed him, hoping against hope that she wasn't imagining things. "It's an act. I don't' know why, but you're trying really hard to scare me away. It won't work. I've always been good at reading people."

Gently, she pushed at Tohru's hands, and felt them fall limply away from her waist. Tohru sucked in a sharp, surprised breath. "Dumbass," he muttered." Most of the threat was gone from his voice, and again Minako could hear more of the man she'd met outside of Shiroku the night before.

Sounding both deflated and grudgingly impressed, Tohru told her, "I'm not making this up. I really did bring you down here last night to take advantage of you. I mean it."

I wonder, thought Minako, if I already knew that. For some reason, it didn't seem to come as a surprise to her, although she knew she should have been upset. Then again, she was no stranger to human nature. Maybe last night she just hadn't really cared.

"Hey," Tohru was saying. "Did you hear me? Are you listening? I just said that I was gonna rape you. I thought you were blind, not deaf."

"Why?" asked Minako. "Why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I…seriously? Wh-what kind of a question is that?" Tohru laughed, a bit nervously. "Jeez, you really are something else, you know that?"

"Why?" persisted Minako. "You could have done it just now if you wanted to. I'm sure you're stronger than me. There's no one else around. What's stopping you?"

"I…" Tohru didn't seem to have an answer to that for a moment. Finally, in a lower, almost embarrassed voice he mumbled, "I don't get you. Just now, you go and say something crazy like that, and then last night…it was the way you looked at me. My hands were tied."

"Because of the way I looked at you?" asked Minako. "I didn't look at you. I can't look at anything, remember?"

"You know what I mean," insisted Tohru, frustrated. "Last night, when we were sitting here, you leaned over to me and you said something only a stupid, naive kid would say, like 'besides, you don't seem so bad.' You looked at me like I was this really cool guy, or someone you might even want to get to know. Like I was a real person, a human being. I…I don't' remember the last time someone's looked at me like that." Again, there was that nervous laugh. "I…kinda liked it. It felt good. I didn't want you to get the chance to see me any other way."

In the silence that followed his words, he sat down on the bank, and Minako realized that she'd been holding her breath until that moment. "Wipe that pitiful look off your face, huh?" muttered Tohru. "I didn't earn it and I don't want it."

Sitting down carefully next to him, not quite within an easy arm's reach, Minako shook her head. "No pity," she assured him. "I just think it might be time to get some new friends, if they look at you like you're not human."

"Heh, maybe I'm not," said Tohru bitterly. "What do you know about it?"

There were so many underlying layers of loathing and pain in his voice that Minako wished for the second time that evening that she could see his face. She didn't, she realized, actually have any idea what Tohru looked like. For all of his bitter words and frustrated talk, he didn't sound like a monster. If he'd really been like that, she told herself, he never would have tried to scare her away, never would have told her truth about his intentions the night before. She wanted to know what he was really like.

"Okay," she suggested suddenly. "Let's play a game."

"That's all you've got to say?" Tohru sounded wryly amused. "You sure you're not twelve after all?"

"Very funny," retorted Minako. "Anyway, it'll work like this. I bet that I can prove that you're human. If I can do it, then I win, and if I win, then you have to come with me over to Junes and buy me an ice cream."

"Girls your age shouldn't be eating ice cream," said Tohru. "You'll gain weight. Isn't that a big deal in high school? What do I get if I win?"

Minako shrugged. "I don't' know, bragging rights? I'll make you a big banner that says 'warning: evil demon spirit' on it, or something."

Tohru laughed, and this time it was almost a genuine, untainted laugh. "You're on," he said. "This'll be interesting, at least. So, how are you going to prove it?"

"Hold still." Minako crawled over closer to him, and placed both hands lightly against his chest. Slowly, careful to avoid anywhere sensitive, she moved her hands up towards his shoulders.

He wasn't, she realized, with just a twinge of disappointment, muscular like Shinjiro. Instead, Tohru was pretty slight for a guy, almost skinny.

Underneath her fingers, Tohru tensed up. "Wait," he asked. "What are you doing? This isn't…that kind of game is it? Not that I'm against that sort of thing, it's just…"

"Don't get your hopes up," said Minako. "I'm figuring out what you look like."

Relaxing slightly, Tohru mumbled, "Oh, right, sure. Well, that's too bad." He squirmed, and then added, "Hey, that uh…that kinda tickles."

"I can stop if it bothers you," said Minako, preparing to move away from him.

He pressed her hands back against his chest. "N-no," he said hastily, "no, I didn't say it was a bad thing. Not bad, not bad at all…just different.

Minako realized, somewhat to her surprise, that she was enjoying this. "Different? You mean, you don't spend all of your time being groped by blind people? You're missing out."

"Well, I am definitely starting to get that sense, yeah," agreed Tohru.

Minako's fingers encountered a button, and then the bottom of what turned out to be a tie. "What color tie?" she asked.

"What? Oh, white shirt, red tie," replied Tohru. "Why?"

Minako smiled to herself. "Snappy dresser, huh?"

"Heh…I try, I guess." Underneath her hands, Tohru shifted awkwardly. "Not sure why, not like anybody's paying attention." As her fingers began to trace along his jaw line, Tohru opened his mouth, closed it again, and then managed, "You're teasing me, aren't you? You really think that's a good idea, under the circumstances?"

"I am not," Minako insisted, "doing anything like that. I told you, we're proving a point. Besides, I'm not scared of you. You're not going to hurt me. If you were going to, you'd have done it already. You've had plenty of opportunities. Instead, you tried to scare me off. My friend Junpei always says that most guys would jump any girl in the middle of the street, if they thought they could get away with it. They don't, though. Everybody has feelings and urges that they're ashamed of. What matters is what we do, not what we wish we could do." There was a mist of sweat, she found, on Tohru's forehead, and his cheeks were warm. "You're uncomfortable," she told him.

"That's…not exactly the word I would use," mumbled Tohru. "And that thing you said…there you go again, sounding like a dumbass. You sound just like him, actually. That guy I told you about. He was all about starting over, and second chances…but it doesn't work that way. You can't change who you are. Trust me, I've tried. Trying only stresses you out, and that just makes it worse. Nobody around here believes in second chances. Maybe if I'd met you years ago, then…everything would have worked out differently, but as it is, what's the point in thinking about it? Wishful thinking doesn't win anything. All it does is waste time."

"Done," said Minako, dropping her hands back into her lap.

Tohru let out an exaggeratedly large sigh. "Okay," he said. "What's the verdict, doctor?"

"You're definitely human." Minako shrugged. "You look just like one. Now I'm sure."

"Wow." Tohru laughed. "Doesn't that seem a little anticlimactic? No, I like it," he added, as Minako opened her mouth to protest. "I like it a lot. It's nice to hear. I don't know if that really counts as proof, though…"

Before Minako had a chance to insist upon her ice cream, an all-too familiar searing pain shot through her forehead, eliminating any coherent thoughts she was trying to have. The pain was so bad this time that it caught her off guard, and she swayed for a moment, off balance from the force of the ache.

"Whoa, watch out!" Tohru reached out and grabbed her, keeping her upright and away from the nearby waters. "No wonder your friends think you're useless. You can't even sit up straight by yourself."

As the pain receded, almost as quickly as it had come, Minako smiled weakly. "I thought you said," she reminded him, "that you weren't going to catch me if I fell into the river."

"And I thought you said," retorted Tohru, "that you weren't going to need me to!"

"Oops," admitted Minako. "Okay, you're right. I guess that means you've been my hero twice now. Once at Shiroku, and then just now."

She expected Tohru to laugh it off, but instead he went quiet for a moment, before saying, more sincerely than she'd heard him speak yet, "Yeah…I think I like being your hero. Wouldn't mind doing it again sometime." Then, in a louder voice, as though suddenly trying to cover, he said, "maybe I'll push you into the river, just so I can pull you out again. That'll make three."

"As long as you do pull me out again," said Minako. "I guess that wouldn't be so bad."

"Really?" asked Tohru, and Minako became suddenly very aware of the fact that he was still holding her up after her close encounter with the river. His heart was pounding against her chest, and she tried to ignore the fact that hers was keeping time. "Well then," he teased her. "In that case, why don't I do it right now?"

He lurched forward, and Minako, instinctively afraid of being pitched into the water, grabbed on to his arms to steady herself. Her face brushed against the front of his shirt, and she heard his sharp intake of breath.

It wasn't a conscious choice. She never exactly meant to do it, and later, when she looked back, Minako couldn't really explain to herself why it had happened. Maybe it was the stress of the past few days, and all the angry, frustrated, confused feelings screaming to get out of her head. Maybe she was just enjoying the delicious, illicit feeling of being wanted by someone she shouldn't have. Whatever it was, whatever the reason, Minako reached up and kissed him. She felt him lean instantly into the kiss, and his hands tightened convulsively around her waist, boosting her up higher to make her mouth easier to reach. "Mngh," he mumbled.

They lingered there for a moment before Minako broke the kiss, her face flushed hot with shame and embarrassment. That, she knew, had been a terrible mistake. She couldn't just go around kissing strangers, even if they were brooding older men from mysterious faraway places. It wasn't that she hadn't enjoyed the kiss. She had. She'd enjoyed it very much, but…Shinjiro's face floated up into the front of her mind, and Minako felt a little bit sick to her stomach all of a sudden.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, not entirely sure who she was apologizing to. "I need to go home."

"Shouldn't you have figured that out a while ago?" asked Tohru breathlessly. "Why the rush all of a sudden?" He didn't let go. Instead, he kissed her again, and then again. They were hungry, hurried kisses, and she heard his breathing getting heavier as his tongue forced its way into her mouth. Minako tried to break away from him, but his fingers dug into the small of her back, pushing her into him.

"Tohru-san," she breathed. "Let go of me."

"Don't look at me like that," he insisted, panting. "You kissed me. You started it. What'd you expect me to do? It's not nice to tease…I'm sure your boyfriend's told you that."

Come to think of it, Minako thought, Shinjiro had made that point on several occasions. He'd told her that she drove him crazy and shouldn't do certain things if she didn't plan to follow through with them. He was usually kidding, though, or blushing while he said it. This was different. Tohru wasn't joking around at all, and this time he wasn't trying to scare her, or put on an act. This was very, very real, and this Tohru, the one who had his arms around her now, was a very different person from the slightly nervous jokester that she'd been talking to only moments before. Minako felt herself getting really frightened for the first time that night. She tried to quell the panic that was beginning to rise inside her.

Pressing her unyieldingly backwards, Tohru lowered her down on to the bank and then climbed on top of her, one hand gripping her by the shoulder while the other began to pull at the edge of her sweater.

"Tohru, stop," insisted Minako. "Enough, leave me alone. Please, I want to go home, I'm…I'm scared."

At first, he didn't seem to hear her, and his hands continued to tear at her clothing Minako tried desperately to think of a sound escape strategy.

He doesn't really want this, she told herself. If he did, he'd never have tried to scare me off when I first got here tonight. Part of him is still willing to fight against this. On a sudden impulse, she lifted both of her hands up to his face and forced him to turn his head to look her in as close to her eyes as she could reasonably estimate.

"Stop," she told him, and was delighted to hear the lack of quaver in her voice. "This isn't what you want, there's more to you than this. Please."

Even before she finished speaking, Minako felt him shudder, and then go still against her hands. Slowly, his fingers played over the rift in her sweater that he'd managed to tear, and then, gasping out a breath, he abruptly pushed himself away from her and scrambled to his feet.

"Goddamnit," he muttered, incredulously. "How do you…?"

Minako pulled herself up, and waited a moment until she knew she was breathing steadily again. Her heart rate began to slow back to its normal pace, and the urge to scream started to die away.

"Tohru-!" she began.

Tohru cut her off almost before she'd even begun. "You're wrong about me," he muttered, with a bitter, desperate little laugh. "I'm nobody's hero. Don't…don't kid yourself. You won't' have any better luck than he did." Minako could hear the self loathing dripping off of his voice, and instinctively, despite the illogical stupidity of the gesture, she reached out to him. He recoiled from her instantly.

"Now get out of here," he told her. "Go home, okay? Don't come looking for me again. You might not be so lucky next time. Maybe neither of us will." With that, he turned around and walked off, leaving Minako, for the second time, abandoned on the flood plain the dark.

**Chapter Ten**

**Author's Note: **Well, isn't this lucky. I got to class tonight and so many people are sick that the row behind me is completely empty, which means no one will be able to see that I am not taking lecture notes, but am in fact writing stories. I'mhonestly usually a better student than this. Really! It's just that I feel like I already took all of this material in another course…

But I digress. You guys were truly wonderful to me in your thoughtful and kind responses to the last chapter. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts, it really helped me out and gave me some confidence.

So now, for your reading pleasure, some Minako and Yosuke, because that will be a very nice change from all the Adachi…won't be long till he's back though.

I put together a Valentines Day piece for you guys, as promised! I'm going to try to type it up tonight, but if you don't see it tonight, then I will definitely post it tomorrow. Either way, thanks for all of the great ideas!

**Chapter Ten**

After she was sure that Tohru was really and completely gone, Minako started to wander back along the flood plain, feeling dazed and full of confused inexplicable feelings.

What, she asked herself, had just happened?

Her heart was still racing, and no matter how hard she tried, Minako couldn't seem to calm herself down. She'd almost been raped. There was still mud streaked down her back and caught up in her hair from the moment when Tohru had pushed back against the riverbank. Her sweater was torn, and there were threads drifting down from it and catching on twigs and other pieces of inconvenient nature, which only served to tear it further.

I will probably, she thought, have to throw this sweater out. After all, I doubt I can ever wear it again with this huge hole in it. That very thought was so bizarre that it worried her. Why wasn't she scared? She knew she should be sobbing and desperate and panicked, and above all else frightened. Instead, all she could think about was the pain and the loathing in Tohru's voice when he'd spat out the words, "you're wrong about me.'" He had sounded so…so defeated. She was still fighting the urge to run after him, to soothe him and to promise him that she wasn't scared and that he hadn't hurt her. At the same time, within the very same thought, she wanted to get as far away from him as she possibly could.

"Oh god," muttered Minako to herself, as she walked past the shrine. "It's finally happened. I've snapped. I'm going insane. Maybe I'm already insane." She certainly felt scattered enough to warrant that conclusion.

"Hey! Minako!" Yosuke's voice called out to her, and soon she heard footsteps pounding over the ground to meet her. "Are you going back to the…whoa." He stopped mid-sentence, as if he'd lost his train of thought.

Aware of what she must look like right now, Minako fidgeted uncomfortably, poking her finger through the sweater hole as she muttered, "Um…Yosuke. Hi."

"What…what happened to you?"He reached up and wiped off a speck of mud that was apparently still clinging to her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," mumbled Minako. "Yes, I'm fine. Thank you. I…" There didn't seem to be any good, coherent excuse that she could make to explain this away. Of course, she could always tell him the truth. The truth, being something along the lines of "I was making out with a mysterious stranger, and he decided he didn't want to let me stop," was somehow too hard for Minako to admit. What if Yosuke got angry? He and the others were always telling her not to go out on her own, in case she got herself into trouble. This definitely counted as "getting into trouble," and her friends would only get stricter and more problematic if they found out that they might have been right all along. What if Yosuke told Shinjiro about this? That was a prospect so bad, it wasn't even worth contemplating.

"I was restless," she told him, "and I wanted to walk along the river like Shinji and I do sometimes. There was this low tree branch, and I got caught, so then I-!"

"Yeah, you know, there's a reason that Shinji usually goes with you," interrupted Yosuke. "Man, I'm just glad you didn't fall in. Can you imagine what Shinjiro-san and that guy Junpei would do if you drowned? We'd have gone to all that trouble last year for nothing."

Minako breathed out a little sigh of relief."Yeah," she muttered, "sorry. You're right. I should go home to Shinji, he'll be worried."

"Nah," said Yosuke. "I mean, yeah, he would be worried, if he knew, but he and Junpei went out drinking tonight. They probably don't even know you're not there."

Shinjiro was out drinking? That didn't sound good, thought Minako. Shinjiro never went out drinking. He didn't ever drink, unless it was to add some extra flavor to the food. "Oh," she murmured, more to herself than to Yosuke. The idea of Shinjiro drinking his troubles away at some pub only made her feel worse about the mess she'd gotten herself into. What was she going to say to him when he got home?

"You look messed up," Yosuke informed her. "I mean…not, like, ugly, or anything, just…uh, you look like you had a rough day. I'm going over to Yu's place, you wanna come? I'm pretty sure he won't mind. Besides, Nanako-chan likes you."

Minako did not want to be alone with her thoughts right now, and she didn't want to sit at home and dread some kind of a confrontation with Shinjiro. "Yeah," she agreed readily. "Thank you, that'd be nice."

"Great." Yosuke sounded relieved. "Cause there's something I want to talk to you about. Uh…you're not going to like it, though."

As they walked back together through the streets of the shopping district, Yosuke filled Minako in on the things they'd seen inside the Velvet Room. She'd already known about the shadows attacking her mind. After all, Yosuke had explained to her about the first one that Nanako had defeated. The giant horse shadow, however, interested her. Something about the idea of a horse sparked some kind of vague recollection.

"Horses," she muttered. "What are horses supposed to represent?"

"Who knows," sighed Yosuke. "Horses smell, and they're scary…I don't like horses. When I was a kid, my mom took me to this petting zoo, and the guy there offered to let me ride the pony. I was on the ground in, like, two minutes, and it hurt!"

Minako smiled, picturing a tiny version of Yosuke falling off of a horse with a very surprised, indignant look on his little face. "But horses," she insisted, "mean something. I wish I could remember…"

"Well, whatever it is," replied Yosuke, "if we don't get it out of there, it's gonna start making you crazy. At least, that's what Margaret says. Junpei thinks that's why you get those bad headaches, right? So, maybe if we kill it, the headaches will stop. I bet you'd love that. Shinjiro-san says they keep you both up at night."

Crazy, thought Minako. The shadows are making me crazy. Theodore had said something about that too, hadn't he? All of these things she'd been feeling lately, were the shadows responsible for that? If only she could be sure that were true, maybe she wouldn't have to feel so guilty about what had happened tonight.

By this time, they'd arrived at the Dojima residence, and Yosuke was ringing the doorbell. "Yosuke," announced Minako, probably more loudly than she'd intended. "I need you to do something for me."

"Sure," said Yosuke. "What's up?"

"I need you," said Minako, "to help me get inside the Velvet Room."

She heard the door to the house creak open, just as Yosuke shouted, "What? No, no way! No way, not a chance."

"What's going on out here?" asked Yu. "Keep it down, Nanako just went to bed."

Yosuke, Minako, and Yu all went into the house, with Yosuke still protesting loudly, if not quite as loudly as before.

"She just asked me," he explained to Yu, "to put her inside the TV. Can you believe that? Minako, you've seen what happens to people without personas who go in there. The get attacked by their other selves. People…people have gotten killed in there." Minako heard the sudden chill in Yosuke's voice, and knew that he was thinking of the girl whom Yu had told her about, the girl named Saki Konishi. "What do you want to go in there for anyway?"

"I want," said Minako, "to talk to Igor. I want to understand about the shadows, and the mind doors, and everything. You can't expect me to just sit out here and do nothing while battles go on inside my head."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I expect you to do," retorted Yosuke. "You're better off waiting than dead, okay? Its okay, we've got this. It's under control."

"That's not fair." Minako was trying very hard to keep her voice level. "There's so much that I don't understand. I'm getting all this information, and all of these stories from you guys second-hand, but I want to know what's going on for myself. Maybe that won't help at all, but maybe it will. It's my head, isn't it? Maybe I'll even be able to do some good. No one knows my own head better than I do." Although, she had to admit to herself, lately she'd been feeling less and less sure of and in touch with what was really going on with her thoughts and feelings. That was, of course, the main reason she wanted into the Velvet Room so badly.

Unexpectedly, Yu spoke up in Minako's defense. "Actually," he admitted, "I'd like to see Igor as well. I have a lot of questions that he might be able to answer."

"What, you too?" Yosuke was getting desperate. "Come on, guys, this is insane. Don't ask me to do this. The other guys would kill me if they found out I put you in danger. I'm not even sure I could blame them. Try to understand where I'm coming from, here. And…besides." Suddenly, Yosuke's voice lowered, and he was more serious than Minako usually heard him being. "It's not just the others. Didn't we agree that you guys were done with this stuff? I mean, you almost died. No, you did die, both of you. You died. Isn't once enough for one lifetime? Wait…no, that didn't make sense, what I meant was-!"

"We know what you meant," said Minako. "Yosuke, everything will be fine. Yu and I can't face our other selves in the TV world anyway, because our other selves are currently holding the seal together, remember?"

"And what about the other shadows?" Yosuke persisted. "What's gonna stop them from coming after you?"

"I was hoping that you would," murmured Yu.

"Please, Yosuke," added Minako, in the most pleading, trusting tones she could manage.

Yosuke sighed. "Look," he said. "Even we went ahead with this, and even if I did come with you, I wouldn't be enough. There are two of you, tons of shadows, and only one of me. What kind of odds are those? We'd need at least one other persona user, and nobody else is gonna come out with us at this time of night. Shinjiro-san and Junpei are probably drunk right now, the girls are almost definitely asleep, and Kanji-!"

From over by the stairway, someone gave a sleepy little cough.

"Are you…going into that place?" asked Nanako blearily. "I want to come."

"No," said Yu."Go to back to bed, Nanako. We're sorry we woke you."

"Yeah," muttered Yosuke. "This idea is nuts enough as it is without getting you involved, Nanako-chan."

Nanako yawned. "But…I want to help," she said, with about as much stoic determination as a half-asleep eight year old girl could manage. "I can help, too. Icarus and I can help together. Big Bro…please?"

Yosuke grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. "We," he said to Yu, "should probably stop letting Minako and Nanako hang out together…"

**Chapter Eleven**

**Author's Note: **This was not one of the most fun chapters ever to write, because it's mostly exposition. In fact, this chapter could be entitled "Theodore answers your questions about the rest of this story." However, the stuff revealed in this chapter is so important and sets up so much of the plot for the next, like, twenty or thirty chapters.

Again, this is the part of the story where I make up some things and create new aspects of the Velvet Room and the world around it. Please keep an open mind, and I hope you enjoy!

Oh, PS: I'm going to Katsucon tomorrow. It's this big anime convention on the East Coast. I…don't actually watch any anime, so I'm not sure what I'll do there. Possibly I will sit there while my friends watch anime, and I will write another chapter…we shall see. Oh! Oh! I know what I'll do. They have lovely artists at these anime cons, right? Maybe I'll buy a commissioned drawing from an artist, so that I can finally have a piece of cover art for this story…that might be nice.

**Chapter Eleven**

Nanako opted to wear her pajamas to the Velvet Room.

"Are you sure it's okay?" she asked doubtfully, as they rode over to Junes in Yosuke's car. "I know it's not polite to wear sleeping clothes in front of other people."

"Igor's not 'people,'" Yosuke assured her. "Actually, no one really knows what he is."

"Besides creepy," added Minako.

Nanako was quiet for a moment. "I don't think he's so creepy," she said thoughtfully, after a pause. "After all, he's always very nice, and says 'welcome' whenever we come."

Minako began to wonder if, just possibly, Nanako was the most mature person currently in the vehicle.

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke, who must have recognized the thought on Minako's face. "She definitely takes after her Big Bro."

Apparently, that made Nanako smile. Minako could hear the beaming grin playing all around Nanako's voice when she said "Yeah!"

They pulled up outside Junes, and Yosuke let them into the electronics department. "Okay," he said. "So…what now?"

Minako frowned. "Yu should go in first," she decided. "It'll take both of us to pick up his chair, and then you can push him in."

"Ugh, I really don't like the way you said that," muttered Yosuke. "Do you have to say 'push?' I mean, it's not like I'm forcing him."

"Fine," agreed Minako. "You can 'help' him in, then. Nanako goes in next, and then me, and then you. Okay?"

"You're sure you want to do this?" Yosuke sounded like he was still holding out hope for a different answer than he'd gotten the last ten or twelve times he'd ask the question.

"Yes," said Yu, "we're sure. Yosuke, thank you."

Yosuke grumbled something under his breath. "Don't thank me yet," he cautioned. "We still don't know if this is gonna work. Come on, Minako, let's get it over with."

Together, Yosuke and Minako managed to heave Yu's chair up on to their shoulders."Hang in there, partner," said Yosuke. "Here we go." He tipped the chair forward, and Yu tumbled into the TV, chair and all. "Oh good," sighed Yosuke, sounding relieved. "I was kinda worried that maybe the chair wouldn't go in, like that one time that we tried to bring along a rope. Okay, Nanako-chan, your turn."

Minako heard Nanako step cautiously into the TV, and then the sound of her footsteps and her breathing were gone, implying that she was already inside.

"And," finished Yosuke," now for you."

She expected for Yosuke to just shove her in, but instead Minako felt herself being picked up. "Hey!" she began, as Yosuke swung her awkwardly up into his arms. "Wait, Yosuke, put me-!"

"Sorry," countered Yosuke, sounding a little embarrassed. "Um…I think it's probably better if we go in together. You know. So you don't get hurt or something before I come in after you, you know?"

There was a strange, familiar blurring feeling to the air around them, and then Minako's feet touched down on the ground again.

"Good," said Yu. "We all made it."

"Yeah," grumbled Yosuke. "I was kinda hoping that it wouldn't actually work. Oh, well."

Minako, however, wasn't ready to celebrate quite yet. "We still have to get into the Velvet Room," she reminded them. "Yu and I can't go in without our personas, right?"

Yu, sounding uncharacteristically frustrated, said, "Unfortunately, I can't even see the door anymore."

Minako had already thought about that possibility on the drive to Junes. "I had a feeling that might happen," she told them. Walking over to Yu, she held her hand out to him. "Two halves of a thing make a whole, right? So, maybe we can go in together. If we're touching each other, that might…I don't know, create some kind of connection. Two bodies, one soul, that sort of thing."

"It's worth a try," agreed Yu. His hand closed around hers, and for a few tense moments, nothing happened.

"So?" asked Minako, trying not to let her impatient nerves show. "Can you see the door now?"

Yu sounded disappointed. "No," he said, "I still can't."

That was a serious setback. Of course, Minako had known that the idea might not work. Honestly, once she'd voiced the 'two bodies, one soul,' part out loud, it had sounded pretty stupid. Still, there had to be some way to get inside, and it had seemed reasonable that two partial souls who couldn't get in separately might be able to get if they joined together. At least, it had made sense in her head several minutes ago when she'd come up with it in the first place.

Taking a deep breath, she said, "Well, okay, then in that case, I'm not sure how we're going to-!"

Nanako spoke up, interrupting Minako's train of thought. "Um," she asked, "you just want to talk to someone in the Velvet Room, right? Would it be okay to talk to Theodore?"

"Y-yes, I think so," replied Minako. After all, Theodore had always seemed to be fully attuned to the mysterious workings of the Velvet Room.

"Oh." Nanako sounded pleased. "Well, then I'll just go in and get him, okay? That'd be much easier. I'll be right back."

As Nanako's footsteps headed away from them, Yosuke sighed in exaggerated exasperation. "We could probably have just had her bring him out to us in the first place!" he exclaimed. "Man, how come none of us thought of that? You two didn't even have to come in here…and now my back is killing me from picking up that heavy chair."

Minako didn't answer. True, talking to Theodore would be the next best thing, but she had really hoped for a chance to see the door in her mind and the horse-shaped shadow for herself. Of course, there was no point in trying to explain that to Yosuke.

A few moments passed before Yu said quietly, "She's growing up. Even last time I came to visit, Nanako didn't seem so…"

"Old?" suggested Yosuke. "Precocious?"

"Poised," Yu finished. "She's more of a woman than a little girl. It's…kinda scary."

"Yeah," Yosuke agreed. "Just imagine how Dojima-san must feel. Oh, man, if he ever found out about us bringing her in here…do you think we could be arrested for this? Is there a charge?"

"There wouldn't be enough left of us to arrest," Yu assured him. "Oh, look, here comes Nanako with Theodore. That was fast."

"I found him!" Nanako came running up, breathless with pride. "I brought Theodore!"

Minako felt a brief and slightly embarrassing twinge of jealousy. Once upon a time, she had been the one with the special permission to escort the various denizens of the Velvet Room. Back then, it would have been her who had found the solution and saved the day. Now, of course, even Theodore, who had once admitted to her that she was more than just a special guest to him, came only when other people called. She had to wait around for help just for a chance to talk to him.

Theodore rested a hand on Minako's shoulder. "Nanako informs me that you have something to ask," he murmured. "How can I be of service?"

Minako bristled at the obvious pity she heard in his voice. Tohru had been right, pity was atrocious. "Yeah," she told him. "I do. I have a lot of questions. I want to know more about the doors, and about the horse shadow that Yosuke found, and…"

"I can think of a great question," interjected Yosuke. "Speaking of that shadow, how do we kill that thing?"

Minako ignored him. "I don't understand," she continued, aware that she was sounding a bit more like a petulant child than Nanako ever did. "What's happening to me?"

"And what about Yu? Is he gonna have shadows attacking him, too?" insisted Yosuke.

Theodore made a thoughtful little noise in his throat. "It is somewhat difficult to explain to a person from your world," he began. "As we told you once before, the loss of your persona has released the shadows into the parts of your mind that were once forbidden for them to enter."

"I know that," muttered Minako. "I know that, but, released from where? Where do they come from?"

"They…do not come from anywhere." Theodore sounded puzzled by the question. "They are created. Shadows are and will always be mere manifestations of human desires. The ones within your sanctum were simply brought forth from your own feelings."

Minako was already sorry she'd asked the question. This wasn't the answer that she'd hoped for at all.

"So, essentially," said Yu, "what you're telling us is that the shadow in Minako's mind is just the representation of what she really feels like?"

"Yeah, that's not so bad," said Yosuke, apparently relieved. "It's not like just feelings can hurt you, right?"

Theodore gave a polite little cough. "I am afraid it is worse than you seem to imagine. Again, I am having trouble deciding on the best way to explain it to you. ..but I shall try. Think of the doors in the mind of the persona user as thresholds, or rather, as inhibitions. Now, imagine that the shadows are feelings, very strong, powerful feelings that come from the deepest places in your own souls. As long as the shadows cannot pass through the doors, then the feelings are successfully inhibited, and cannot be transformed into actions. If the thresholds are breached, however, and the inhibitions are thus removed, all manner of things could be possible."

"So," attempted Yosuke, "like, if I was really hungry, and all that I could find in the house was a donut, even though In knew that I wanted to work on my abs…"

"Not exactly," murmured Theodore. "Perhaps I should provide an example. Are you familiar with the human expression 'I am so angry that I could just kill him?' It is, I believe, an expression of hyperbole."

"Yes," agreed Minako. There was a sick sort of feeling beginning in the pit of her stomach.

"Well," Theodore continued, apparently either oblivious to or unmoved by her growing distress, "Normally, one would simply have that thought, but be would also aware subconsciously that taking the action of actually killing the individual in question would be ridiculous and extreme. The continued presence, however, of the shadow within the sanctum exacerbates the feelings. The longer that the shadow feeds off of the mind, the weaker become the inhibitions, and the thoughts and actions become one and the same."

Silence reigned all around for what felt to Minako like an eternity.

Into the heavy atmosphere, Yosuke finally muttered, more to himself than to anyone else, "'feeding off of the mind…so, they really are eating her brains?"

"What do you mean?" insisted Minako. "My 'thoughts and actions will become one and the same?' Am I going to start killing people?"

"Not unless you are strongly inclined to do so already," replied Theodore reasonably. "The enhanced feelings are, after all, not created by the shadows, only intensified. They come from inside of you. No shadow can provide you with new desires that you do not already contain. The difference is that while you would normally resist a certain action that you know to be inappropriate or wrong, the presence of the shadow will prevent you from recognizing the true, correct path. Once the shadow is destroyed, of course, the feelings will cease to build, and everything will return to a state of normality."

"But we can't kill it!" exclaimed Yosuke. "It's crazy strong! The thing resists every attack we throw at it. How are we supposed to get rid of it? What are we supposed to do?"

"Ah." This time, Theodore sounded almost worried himself. "That is a question that, alas, I cannot answer for you."

Minako wondered idly to herself in the one tiny, obscure part of her mind that somehow hadn't already begun to panic, whether or not she was about to turn into some kind of serial killer. If she could commit any sort of horrifying atrocity, what would it be? Shaking her head, she dispelled those thoughts as fast as shecould. There was no reason for that to happen. There was no way that it would happen. Minako didn't have thoughts and feelings like that anyway, did she?

What, she couldn't help but think, about the time that she'd almost sacrificed Yu in order to save herself? According to Theodore, under the current circumstances, she'd never have been able to see her way clear to making that decision. It would have been a question purely of what she wanted, not of what she knew was the right thing.

Unexpectedly, Yu spoke up. "We know," he said slowly, "that the loss of the persona can cause this. Are there any other situations that might make the inhibitions lose control of the thoughts?"

"Huh?" asked Yosuke. "What do you mean, 'other situations?' What are you getting at?"

Again came that thoughtful noise from Theodore, as though the gears were actually turning in his head. Eventually, he re replied carefully, "Of course. While the loss of a persona encourages the shadows, one does not actually have to sacrifice it. A weak minded vessel, or a persona user who lacked the necessary strength of heart might suffer similar consequences. The user would lose control of the persona, the persona would lose control of the inhibitions, and the shadows would, again, take over the mind. It could not, you understand, happen to a normal person. Only a persona user both wields and attracts the kind of power that the shadows would be drawn to, but…none of you, of course, have anything to worry about in that respect. After all, it was your strength of character and your inner control that caused your persona to awaken in the first place. In that case, none of you would be ever to have to face-!"

"That's not true," interrupted Yu. "It's not true in my case. Unlike the others, I didn't awaken to my power by myself. Someone else forced me to find it."

Now that he mentioned it, Minako remembered Yosuke telling her all about how Yu had been different, and how the goddess Izanami had awakened his power in order to set her greater plans in motion. Still, it wasn't as though she'd created the power. It had been in Yu from the start, hadn't it? She'd just pushed him forward to find it. From everything Minako had seen of Yu, she had to admit that he was one of the most shining examples of a human being that she could possibly think of. The word "weak-willed described him as well as the words "clever," or "appropriate" might describe Teddie's sense of humor. It didn't fit.

"Come on, man," said Yosuke, who had apparently been thinking along similar lines. "You're not seriously worried, right? I mean, you're the greatest guy I know. You're the best. Right, Nanako-chan?"

"Right!" chirped Nanako, with unwavering loyalty.

Yu didn't say anything at all. Minako could still hear him breathing slowly a few feet away.

**Chapter Twelve**

**Author's Note:** So, today I went to Katsucon. I was not sure what to expect.

I am now the owner of two Adachi prints, one Minako print, one set of persona character buttons, one set of mini figurines of the persona 4 boys in their drag costumes, and a totally empty wallet.

…Wait, what just happened?

**Chapter Twelve**

Minako drove back to the Dojima residence with Yu, Yosuke, and Nanako. Dojima himself still wasn't home when they arrived, even though by then it was after ten o'clock. If Shinjiro and Junpei were still at the pub, she thought, then they'd probably be there till at least midnight. Junpei enjoyed his nights on the town, when he had the chance, and he wasn't likely to cut it short early.

"I'm not feeling very well," Yu told them, as soon as he'd finished putting Nanako to bed. "I'm gonna get some sleep. Minako, you're welcome to stay on the couch tonight if you don't feel like going home."

Minako almost wanted to take him up on the idea, but she knew that, eventually, Shinjiro would be expecting her.

"Nah, it's fine," Yosuke assured him. "I'll take her home. Night."

Yosuke helped place the ramp that Dojima had purchased for the stairs, and both he and Minako watched as Yu disappeared into his own bedroom. "You can't really blame the guy," Yosuke muttered, with a frustrated little sigh. "That…was a lot of information to take in all at once."

"I don't think he has anything to worry about," Minako insisted. "Yu…is different. He's special. I didn't believe you about that until I'd met him for myself, but I don't think he has a dangerous, negative thought in his head. He's about as close to perfect as a person can come."

Yosuke didn't sound convinced. "Everybody has a dark side," he insisted. "You and I know that better than most people, right? Maybe we just haven't seen his yet. Doesn't mean it isn't there."

Minako knew that, of course, Yosuke was right. Hearing him being so serious for a change was a bit jarring. "Listen, Yosuke," she began, but Yosuke was too busy with his own thoughts to be paying attention.

"It's my fault, you know," he told her. "If Yu has to face some kind of horrible mind-eating monster, it's my fault. I'm the one that put him in this situation. I made the call to get rid of his persona."

"And…you saved my life," murmured Minako. "You saved both of our lives. Are you having second thoughts about that?"

She meant it as a joke, hoping to draw him out of his melancholy funk, but apparently Yosuke wasn't in a mood to play along. "Of course not," he mumbled. "Stupid question. I'd never want to hurt you. It's just..you know, maybe you were right, back in the nightmare world, when you told me that I might be making the wrong decision, splitting Yu's soul without even giving him the chance to tell me what he really wanted. What if…I don't know. What if this is worse?"

Taking a seat at the table, Minako gestured for Yosuke to sit down opposite her. When she heard him push out the chair and plop down in it, she reached across the table, and took his hand. For some reason, he started slightly when she touched him.

"It's not your fault," she told him firmly. "If anything is your fault, it's that we ended up getting a second chance. We all agreed that we were going to move forward through this, with what we have, without looking back, remember? We wouldn't be able even to try doing that, if it wasn't for what you did. I will not let you beat yourself up about this, so we're not gonna talk about it anymore, okay? What's done is done."

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke. "Yeah, okay. But you're not allowed to go crazy on me either. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out. I guess it's kinda like all three of us are partners, now."

Minako smiled. "Coming from you," she said, "that's a big deal."

"Well, we've been through some big stuff," mumbled Yosuke.

A couple of hours later, Yosuke kept his word and drove Minako back home. She heard someone stand up from the table as she unlocked the door, and knew that Shinjiro was already there waiting for her.

"You're home," he said.

There were a hundred things that Minako could potentially have said. Without time to carefully consider which one was the best choice, she blurted out, "you're not drunk, are you?"

"Huh?" Shinjiro sounded surprised. Me? You know I don't do that kinda stuff. Junpei's trashed, though. He only brought me along so somebody would be there to pick his sorry ass up and drive him home."

Minako wasn't sure how to feel. She was relieved, delighted, and deeply embarrassed at the same time. O f course Shinjiro hadn't gone out drinking. It just wasn't like him. The stupid little fight that they'd had that morning wouldn't be nearly enough to turn him into a totally different person, and she'd been stupid to even think about that possibility. Maybe he wasn't even angry at her.

Part of her, the little, confused, conflicted part, honestly wished that he had been angry. She was angry at herself, and if he'd been angry too, at least they would have been on the same page. "Shinji," she began.

Shinjiro took her in his arms, and kissed her forehead. "Don't," he said. "I love you. It's late."

Together, they got undressed, washed up, and got into bed. As she lay against the pillows, listening to Shinjiro's breathing, Minako genuinely tried not to think about the things that were bothering her. She wanted to focus on Shinjiro's last words to her before he'd fallen asleep, or on the wonderful fact that he didn't even seem to care about what she'd said that morning.

Still, one thing in particular that Theodore had said wouldn't leave her alone. It wasn't the fact that there were shadows to face. She and he friends had encountered far more dangerous situations than this, and come through them alive and well. Instead, it was the idea that the strange new feelings she'd been experiencing lately did stem from her, rather than from some manipulative outside source. If all of these feelings really did just come from inside her, then what had happened with Tohru was…essentially what she really wanted, wasn't it?

That, of course, didn't make sense. She could say with complete confidence and total honesty that she loved Shinjiro, that she wanted to be with him and to fix the things that had only started to go wrong between them. After all, they hadn't even been together that long. Fights were totally normal for new couples, and there was still so much time to set things right and to be happy again.

Even as she thought all of those things, however, the image of Tohru's face, the way she imagined it, floated in and out of her head. What could that possibly mean? What was it she really wanted, and would she eve be allowed to decide or figure it out for herself, in the face of the shadow's attack?

Aware that Shinjiro had already dropped off to sleep, Minako curled up on her side, and sniffled quietly into her pillow. Maybe, she reflected glumly, even facing the Great Seal had been easier than talking down her own fickle heart.

**The next morning, at the Dojima residence…**

Yet again, Nanako had a lot to think about.

Some of the stuff that Theodore had explained, about the shadows, and about the feelings in her Big Bro's head hadn't made a lot of sense. He'd gone on and on about Minako's inner feelings, and about the shadows feeding off of the bad things in her head, and Nanako understood that Minako was probably in some trouble. She also understood that Yu, since he and Minako had basically the same sickness, was also maybe in trouble.

What she didn't understand was all that stuff about weakness. Why had Yu looked so sad and worried when Theodore had started talking about people who hadn't awakened their own persona? Was all of that supposed to mean something? Did it mean something bad would happen to Yu?

There was not much point in trying to wrap her head around that. There was, however, one thing that was very clear. Yu and Minako couldn't fight off the shadows by themselves. If no one fought the shadows, then something terrible would happen to hurt them both, and Nanako had been given this special power in order to stop that from happening. It was therefore her job to start figuring out what to do next.

With that thought filling her mind, she came up the stairs from her bedroom with a stoic look of determination planted firmly on her face. From where he was sitting watching TV on the sofa, Dojima looked up at her in surprise.

"Nanako?" he asked. "Uh, what's going on? You look…different. Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine," she told him. "I'm going out to play at Junes with my friends today, okay? I'll see you later!"

As she began to head for the door, Dojima's voice called out after her. "Whoa, hold on, just a minute. Which friends are you meeting? I don't think I want you going out by yourself today. There's still a dangerous man loose in our town, remember? I would feel a lot better if you'd stay home."

Nanako frowned. "Then, what if I ask Yosuke to come with me? I'll call him on the telephone."

Dojima scratched his head in bewilderment. "You want to call Hanamura?" he asked. "Why don't you wait for your cousin to wake up? I bet he'd be happy to spend the day with you today. He doesn't get out enough as it is."

Nanako, however, knew that she wasn't going to wait for Yu. She loved her Big Bro, more than she could possibly describe, but he said that he felt scared when she went into the Velvet Room, and she didn't want to make him feel scared. She didn't like the look that she saw on his face while he was watching her talking to Theodore, or to Igor. No, it would definitely be much better if he didn't know about this. Then it couldn't make him upset.

"I think he's tired today," she said. It wasn't quite a lie. Yu would probably be tired, especially after the events of the night before. Nanako didn't want to make a habit out of lying. Good girls, she knew, did not lie, especially to their fathers. "Can't I go with Yosuke? I'll be careful, I promise."

"Uh…well, I don't see a good reason why not." Dojima bit his lip "That is, if Hanamura wants to go with you. He might think it's a little strange if you just-!"

Nanako ran over to the phone and started dialing Yosuke's number. "Hello? Yosuke? This is Nanako," she said, as soon as someone picked up on the other end. "Will you come with me to Junes today? Dad says that I'm not allowed to go by myself…please?"

"Nana-chan?" The voice on the other end of the line wasn't Yosuke's. "Um, Yosuke's not home right now, he's at work. Are you going to Junes? Oooh, can I come too? We can go find Yosuke and bother him when we get there!"

"Dad?" asked Nanako. "What about Teddie? Is it okay if I go with Teddie?"

Dojima just shook his head and sighed. "Fine," he muttered. "Fine, just…just stay out of trouble. Be back by six o'clock, or I'll get worried and come after you. Okay?"

"Okay!" Nanako barely had time to smile winningly at her dad before she was bouncing at the door and down the street to the store.

Teddie was waiting for her when she got there, in his human form, but without his Junes uniform. Across the food court from them, Nanako could already see Yosuke arguing with a woman in a pink flowery apron.

"I think," began Teddie, "that maybe I forgot that I was supposed to be working today. Do you think Yosuke will be mad at me?"

"Probably," admitted Nanako.

"Hmmm…" Teddie sounded worried. "Okay, then I guess we shouldn't tell him. Come on, Nana-chan, let's get topsicles."

As Teddie dragged Nanako across the food court, carefully avoiding Yosuke as he went, Nanako tugged back against his arm. "Wait, Teddie," she insisted, "we don't have time for that right now! There's something I want to do today!"

Teddie looked disappointed. "Just…just one topsicle?" he asked. "Just one little topsicle?"

Nanako relented. Now that she thought about it, she was kind of hungry after all. "Well, all right," she said. "But only one, okay?"

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Author's Note: **Finally, more Nanako!

Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement these last few days, guys, and for all the advice as to what to do and look for at Katsucon! That definitely made it easier to sort out. Again? Best readers ever. Still true!

So, let's talk about Minako's love life. You guys seemed so interested in the idea of a Minako x Yosuke pairing that I threw it a couple of moments in there for you, and now I think we can definitely say that he has a little crush on her. Still, she has so much else going on in her love life right now that I don't think we should get too attached to the idea of them being together…Yosuke does seem to have a tendency to want what he can't have. Besides, as he said in the previous chapter, they're partners too now, and that would make a romance extremely uncomfortable. It's probably better if they just stay friends. ;)

**Chapter Thirteen**

Nanako soon discovered that dragging Teddie away from topsicles was a lot harder than she'd originally thought. He ended up managing to eat four of them before she finally begged and cajoled him into helping her find Yosuke, who by this time was already on his break.

"Huh?" asked Yosuke, when they finally tracked him down. "Nanako-chan? You want me to do what?"

"Please," pleaded Nanako. "I want to go in and see the doors again."

Nanako could see the word "no" forming on Yosuke's lips before she'd even finished he sentence. She'd expected that to happen, of course. What she didn't expect was for Teddie to suddenly speak up in her defense.

"Aw, please, Yosuke, pretty please?" Teddie did his best to sparkle winningly at Yosuke, who glared at him. "I want to see too! We've never looked inside sensei's door. Let's go check it out. Nana-chan will be safe with us."

Yosuke still clearly didn't want to go along with it, and his frustrated frown told Nanako that he was having a little bit of trouble making up his mind about what the right decision was. She waited patiently while several complex and conflicting feelings made their way of Yosuke's face.

Finally, he sighed. In very much the same way that her dad had done, when he'd finally given in and let her go to Junes with Teddie, Yosuke said "Fine. Okay! I want to know what's inside the doors too. Of course I do. But I'm in charge here, got it? Both of you need to do exactly what I tell you. No going off on your own, and if I say run, then we run. Okay?"

"Okay!" agreed Nanako, beaming at him.

"Oh, Yosuke," babbled Teddie. "You're such a nice guy…"

Shaking his head, Yosuke held up a hand to forestall any more flattery. "Wait," he insisted. "We're not going alone. Not just the three of us. Nanako-chan, we're going to have to bring someone else. Who do you want me to call?"

Nanako blinked. "Um…you want me to decide?" If Yosuke was in charge, she reasoned, wasn't that up to him? "Um, okay…well, uh…how about Yukiko? She's always so friendly, I don't think she'd mind if we asked her."

"But, Nana-chan," Teddie reminded her. "Yukiko has a fire persona, just like you. I can do healing, too, so maybe we need someone who can do the things that we can't do."

"Oh…" Frowning, Nanako tried again. "Okay, um, how about Kanji? He's really strong!"

This time, it was Yosuke who shook his head. "Kanji's pretty impressive, yeah," he agreed, "but it might be better to bring somebody who is strong against the stuff that you're weak against."

"I…don't understand," admitted Nanako. "I'm not weak. Actually, Dad says that I'm pretty strong for my age. I can even help Big Bro carry in all of the grocery bags. I can carry three bags at the same time!"

Nanako had honestly thought that her grocery carrying skills were something to be proud of, but Yosuke still didn't look convinced. "Your persona, Icarus," he began, "uses fire spells, right? At least…I think it does. We've only seen fire spells from Icarus, anyway."

Nanako nodded. "Yeah, it was fire," she agreed.

"So," continued Yosuke, "you're probably gonna be weak to something like…maybe ice. If you're gonna go into the TV world with us, then we need to bring someone who is strong against, or better yet, immune to ice."

"This is hard…" mumbled Nanako. She didn't remember which of her friends were 'strong' or' weak.' They'd all seemed strong to her. She really hadn't seen them fight the shadow things very often, although she had been there when they'd rescued her from Namatame-san. "Um…can I have a hint?" she asked.

Teddie wagged a finger at Yosuke. "You're making this too hard," he admonished. "No fair. Nana-chan, Chie-chan can do ice attacks, and usually, ice attacks don't hit her. Let's call her! I bet she'd love to come and hang out with us!"

"This…isn't really 'hanging out,'" muttered Yosuke, but Teddie was already on the phone.

**Meanwhile, at the police station…**

Dojima came in late, which was unusual. Minako was already sitting patiently at her desk, in the midst of a grueling phone call with an overzealous, elderly Inaba resident when she finally heard him stalk into the room.

"Good morning, Dojima-san," she said dutifully, as soon as she'd finally managed to hang up the phone.

"Arisato," barked Dojima, apparently disinterested in small talk, "call out an alert. Adachi's been spotted at the shopping district. I want two extra units patrolling the area around the Old Shiroku's store, and four extra units at the Junes food court."

Minako was surprised. "Four, sir?" she asked. "Can we really spare four extra units for that one little spot?"

Minako knew that Dojima was glaring at her. She could almost feel the baleful energy beating down on her face in the pause that followed. "I never said 'ask stupid questions,' did I? Just do it."

Minako, very quickly and without any further interjections, did exactly as she was told. Once all of the appropriate calls had been made, and the police officers were on their way, she hazarded to ask, "Did we get a tip? "

"Yeah," growled Dojima. "Daidara thinks he saw him hanging around Shiroku's store sometime last night. He had some kinda weird heavy coat on, but Daidara's sure it was him. That old man's not bad with faces, and he sees a lot of people, so if he says it was Adachi, then he's probably right. Maybe an hour after that, someone else called to say that they thought Adachi might have been buying something at Junes. He's definitely starting to show himself. I guess a guy can't go without eating forever…" After a moment, in a slightly lower tone, he mumbled, "Nanako's at the food court right now with some of your friends."

Oh, thought Minako. Well, that certainly explained the extra firepower that Dojima wanted around the food court. "Do you want me to go over to the food court to check up on things?" she asked.

"No," Dojima told her. "No, I'm going over there right now, and I need you to stay here. There's work to be done."

Minako was surprised and gratified. "Yes sir," she said, trying not to let an inappropriately enthusiastic smile creep on to her face. "What would you like me to do?"

"Here," said Dojima. "I made you a list." Minako heard a piece of paper crinkle on the desktop, and frowned. She didn't enjoy having these kinds of conversations.

"Um, I'm sorry, sir," she began, "but…"

"Huh? Oh." Dojima sighed. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking. Have one of the guys read it to you."

As his footsteps headed doggedly away, Minako heard Dojima call back over his shoulder, "Oh, and Arisato, you should leave early tonight. Start heading home before it gets dark outside, when there are still lots of people around. I expect to see you here in the morning, still in one piece. Understood?"

"Understood," affirmed Minako, picking up the paper with a growing feeling of purpose and determined glee. Now, if only she could find someone who wasn't too busy to help her work out what it was that Dojima actually wanted her to accomplish…

**Meanwhile, inside the TV…**

Nanako, Teddie, Yosuke, Chie, and now Rise stood in front of the door to Minako's nightmares, accompanied by Margaret. At the last minute, Yosuke had insisted on calling Rise, who had rushed over, slightly out of breath and none too pleased that she'd been summoned at such short notice.

"Okay," Yosuke was saying, as the team ventured carefully through the nightmare door together. "Remember, stay cautious. If we see anything in there that we don't think we're ready to handle, we get out. Nanako, don't do anything without asking me first."

"Yeah, I know…" Nanako was starting to get a little annoyed with the way Yosuke was ordering her around. Sure, he meant well, of course, but she wasn't a little kid any more, and besides, Igor and Theodore had told that she had one of the strongest powers that they had ever seen. That really should have counted for something.

Margaret opened the door, and the team walked inside. "Oh crap," muttered Yosuke. "Not again…"

This time, Nanako recognized what it was that was standing and scratching violently at the Izanagi-No-Okami door to her Big Bro's psyche. It was a shadow, and from where Nanako was standing, it really didn't look all that scary. This shadow was pink, or rather, Nanako corrected herself, a sort of pinkish fuschia color, with four long, tentacle-like arms, and large, unblinking eyes.

"It's a squid," she told them, matter-of-factly. "Sort of."

"Hmm…actually, it does kinda look like a squid," agreed Chie. "Aw, now I'm getting hungry again…"

Rise frowned. "What do you think it means?" she asked. "I mean, what would happen if there was a squid inside Yu-senpai's head? I guess a squid is squishy, like a brain…"

Yosuke had already drawn his persona card, and Takehaya Susano-O was out and ready to go. "This doesn't look so bad," he said. "You ready?"

Nanako looked on in amazement as Yosuke's persona released a wind attack that spun the squid shadow around towards him. The squid shadow raised a tentacle, and began careening forward towards Yosuke, but Chie kicked it hard in its face, and the shadow reared back for a moment.

"Yeah," said Chie, "piece of cake!"

The shadow, however, wasn't down for long. Again, the tentacle shot out, and this time it connected, wrapping around Yosuke's legs and bringing him down hard on to the ground.

"Hey!" Nanako felt herself getting angry. "Hey, you stupid squid thing! Leave Yosuke alone!"

She, too, drew her persona card, and Icarus shot out of her to stand in front of her, flexing his wings uncertainly back and forth. The look on his face was so puzzled and piteous that Nanako reached out and put a hand on his bare shoulder. "You can do it!" she promised him. "It's all right, I'm right behind you!"

Icarus nodded once, and then a jet of flame came bursting out of him, taking the squid shadow directly in the center of what Nanako assumed was its stomach. Another blast of wind from Yosuke finally dissolved the thing into a mist of red and black.

"Phew," said Yosuke. "Okay, so not quite as easy as I thought, but still not bad. Everyone okay?"

"Fine," grumbled Chie. "Guess maybe I should be training more often. That kick should have been a real killer!"

Nanako was aware of something glimmering just out of the corner of her vision, and she glanced down to see a persona card lying in front of her on the floor. Picking it up carefully, she saw that it contained the picture of what appeared to be an angel on the front. When Nanako read the word printed on the card, it said, predictably, "angel." She put the card into her jumper pocket. Igor would probably know what to do with that. She would be sure to ask him about it later.

"Hey, Nana-chan!" Teddie was grinning all over his face with bright-eyed enthusiasm. "That was awesome! You really pounded that shadow! Gooo Nana-chan!"

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke, with grudging admiration. "That…was pretty cool. You're more powerful than I expected, huh? I guess even someone your size can really drive a shadow into the ground, with the right persona."

Nanako frowned. What were they talking about? Pounding a shadow, driving it into the ground...all she'd done was to make sure that thing didn't hurt Yosuke anymore. Where had it gone when it had disappeared like that?

"Um…" she asked nervously. "Thank you, I think…do you think that…that maybe I hurt it?"

Yosuke, Teddie, and Chie all stood there, staring at her for a moment. Finally, Yosuke opened his mouth, closed it again, and then opened it once more to ask, "Wait…what?"

**Chapter Fourteen**

**Author's Note: **Uh oh, this was actually supposed to be a double update day, but I fell asleep while I was reading my books for class…my computer made one of those little "ping" noises when I got an email, and that woke me up. Now I can post the next chapter and go back to my work…

I think it was actually **NightFlowerLuv** who wrote the review that caused the email that woke me up. Thank you! Phew.

I'm performing Tuesday night through Sunday night. There will be a few updates, but I will probably have to skip a couple of days, depending on how things work out, so I figure I'll do as much transcribing of my notes now as possible…

And now, for a bit of harmless fun.

**Chapter Fourteen**

"Do you think," repeated Nanako carefully, "that I hurt it?"

Yosuke and Chie stared at each other for a moment. Neither of them seemed to have any idea how to answer that question, which was strange to Nanako, since she was sure that it had been a very simple, straightforward thing to ask.

Again, it was Teddie who broke the silence. "No," he said, with uncharacteristic seriousness of manner. "It's okay, Nana-chan. You didn't hurt it. Shadows can't feel pain. Shadows don't feel any of the things that humans like you can feel."

"Well, most shadows, anyway," muttered Yosuke. Nanako didn't understand what that meant.

She did, however, feel a little bit relieved. "Oh," she said. "That's good. I don't…I don't like to hurt things. When I saw it hurting Yosuke, I just…I got upset, I guess, and then Icarus threw the fire. Was that…the right thing?" Belatedly, Nanako became aware that she hadn't kept her promise to Yosuke. She hadn't waited for his permission. "Um, I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," insisted Rise. "Nanako, it's always the right thing to protect the people you love."

That, at least, made sense. Nanako had always cared very much for all of her Big Bro's friends, who had played with her and helped her through some very difficult times, even rescuing her from danger and then sitting up with her in the hospital while she recovered from that horrible illness more than a year ago. Rise was right. She would do anything she could to make sure that nothing hurt them or made them sad. "Okay," she agreed. "Yeah. I understand."

Yosuke walked forward, passing the place where they'd defeated the shadow, to stand in front of the door to Yu's mind. "In that case," he said, "I think it's time to take a look inside here. Here's hoping for the best…"

Nanako noted with some pride that this time, Yosuke didn't tell her to stand back, or ask any of the others to look after her. Instead, very slowly, with one hand still clutching his persona card, he reached out and pushed open the big door.

"Oh," said Chie, as the door fell backward to reveal an empty chamber inside. "Well, hey, that's a good thing, right?"

Yosuke frowned. "I think so," he said. "I mean…yeah, it's definitely good. But…"

"But what?" asked Teddie. "Sensei's safe now, right? There's nothing in here to bother him."

"I just get the feeling," muttered Yosuke, "that maybe this is the calm before the storm, you know? I mean, what if that squid thing had gotten in? What do you think it was going to do to him?"

With their mission complete, all five members of the team walked back into the Velvet Room, where Igor and the three assistants were seated, waiting for them.

"Well, crisis averted!" announced Yosuke. "I guess we'll just, uh, be going now."

Aware that four pairs of eyes were on her back, Nanako followed him and the others out of the room.

As Yosuke, Rise, and Chie stepped out of the TV, however, and Nanako prepared to join them, Teddie stopped her. "Nana-chan," he asked, still in that unexpectedly serious tone. "Why did you ask about hurting the shadows? Aren't they just monsters to you? Don't they make you scared?"

Nanako made sure to think carefully about that for a moment. If Teddie was really serious about it, then it probably deserved some serious thought. Finally, she said, "Yes, I am scared of them, but…I don't believe in monsters. Monsters aren't real. If something can feel pain, then it's not a monster, it's an animal, or a person, and animals and people can't be monsters." Realizing exactly what she had just said, she frowned, and added, "Well, that didn't make sense…"

Teddie gave her one of his effusive, spontaneous hugs. "Yes it did," was all he said. "Look, look, I made something for you. I worked really hard on these, to make sure that you would like them. Close your eyes!"

Dutifully, Nanako closed her eyes.

"Now," instructed Teddie, "hold out your hands…"

Nanako held out her hands, and something small and delicate was placed gently into them. With her fingers still open, Nanako opened her eyes, and looked down to see that she was now holding a pair of tiny silver glasses, with rims that sparkled very slightly when she turned them over in her hands.

Teddie looked nervous. "Do you…do you like them?" he asked. "Go on, put them n, I want to see."

"I love them," answered Nanako. "Thank you, Teddie." Placing the glasses on her nose, she squinted and peered around until they were settled a little more comfortably on her face. "How do I look?" she asked.

Teddie beamed and glittered at her. "You look just like one of us," he announced. Nanako smiled with real pride and delight.

**Several hours later, at the police station…**

Minako, determined not to shake Dojima's confidence in her, did exactly as she had promised, and left work a little earlier than usual in order to head home before it got dark out. Her plan had honestly been to go straight home to Shinjiro, and she was making her way along the streets of the shopping district when someone bounced out in front of her and put a delicate hand on her shoulder.

"Surprise!" said Rise. "This is an ambush!"

Minako wasn't sure what to say to that. "An..ambush?" she asked. "You mean, like a robbery? Rise, have you been spending too much time in Okina, again? I can spare you five dollars, if you need, but, really, try to stay out of that Croco store. It's kinda becoming an addiction."

"No, not that kind of ambush," laughed Yukiko, from somewhere to Minako's left. "Maybe we should have called it an 'intervention.'"

"Yeah!" announced Chie, coming up on the right. "You spend too much time working, or at home. It's the middle of summer! It's time for you to go out and have a little fun!"

Minako's heart, which had started pounding a little too fast when Rise had suddenly jumped out in front of her, had now begun to slow to its normal pace. "I'm sorry," she began. "Honestly, I'd love to come and hang out with you, but I promised Shinji that I'd go straight home tonight. He really will be upset if I break my promise again."

"Nope!" said Rise triumphantly. "We've already called Shinjiro-san, and he knows about the plan! We are not taking no for an answer, Minako! You're coming with us."

Minako apparently had no choice but to follow behind Rise, who was leading the way while Yukiko held on to one of Minako's arms, and Chie held on to the other. "Where are we going?" she asked, giving up. "I'm not really dressed to go out partying…I've still got my work clothes on."

"Oh, don't worry," Yukiko assured her. "We'll take care of that!"

The girls dragged Minako across town, and eventually on to a train, which she could feel moving beneath her feet as the station announcements echoed overhead. Only when the train had set off for Okina City did Yukiko and Chie finally release Minako and allow her to take her own seat.

"We're going shopping!" announced Rise. "There's a sale at Croco Fur this week, and I don't think you've ever been out shopping with us before. I want to know what kind of things you like to wear when you're not working. We're ready to see the real Minako!"

I am, thought Minako, the real Minako. The real Minako is tired and would really like to go home. Still, she was flattered by the girls' insistence and attention. It was true that it had been a very long time since she'd gone out just to have a good time. If Junpei and Shinjiro could do it, then why couldn't she? "All right," she said. "It sounds like fun. But I warn you, I don't have a ton of money to spare. We may just have to go for accessories."

They got off the train at Okina, and went immediately to Rise's favorite clothing store, a store that, Minako had been told, now had photographs of Rise in her favorite Croco Fur outfits plastered all over its walls and advertisements. Minako, who really had no experience or idea how to pick out such fancy things, allowed Yukiko, Chie, and Rise to go through the shelves, picking out shirts and skirts that they thought would look good on her.

"How about this?" asked Chie, pressing something soft and flimsy in Minako's hands. "I think this color would look super cute on you."

Minako smiled, guessing to herself that the outfit was probably green. "What color is it?" she asked.

"It's…kind of a sea green. Or maybe it's a pea green," said Rise, with a frown in her voice. "Honestly, I think you'd look better in reds and pinks. You have such pretty rosy cheeks, we should try to bring them out more!"

"What do you think Shinjiro-san would like?" asked Yukiko.

The other girls made the appropriate appreciative noises. "Good point," agreed Rise. "Yeah, Minako, what kind of clothes does Shinjiro-san like you to wear?"

The very first thought that popped into Minako's head was that Shinjiro, obviously, didn't care what she wore. The second thought, and one that she hoped desperately didn't show on her face, was that Shinjiro showed the most genuine appreciate of her appearance when she wore no clothes at all.

"Ooh, you're blushing!" Rise was delighted. Minako silently cursed herself for not being able to control her expressions better. "You know, I'm not surprised," continued Rise. "I thought it might be something like that. Shinjiro-san seems so scary sometimes, but I bet he's a really passionate person. The quiet ones usually are, right?"

"Passionate?" Yukiko seemed to be having some trouble with that. "What do you mean, 'passionate?'"

Rise laughed. "Oh, never mind, Yukiko." She gave Minako a little jab in the ribs with one perfectly sculpted elbow. "Minako-chan knows what I mean, right?"

Minako was sure that her face was only getting redder under the other girls' scrutiny and merriment. Trying desperately to change the subject, she blurted out, "You've never told me what kind of guy you like, Rise. Are you into the quiet guys, too?"

It wasn't exactly a full topic change, but nevertheless it seemed to do the trick. Rise and Yukiko suddenly went quiet, and Minako heard Chie let out a little, long-suffering sigh.

"It's…kind of a touchy subject," Chie explained. "Rise and Yukiko…have very similar taste in guys."

"I don't know what you're talking about," insisted Yukiko, way more loudly than she probably needed to. "You say the silliest things sometimes, Chie. Rise and I are totally different people, and we couldn't possibly like the same guy."

Realization suddenly dawned on Minako. "Oh," she murmured. "Oh, you're talking about Yu…"

There was another awkward moment. Then, as brightly as she could, Yukiko spoke up again into the silence. "Actually," she began, "now that you mention it, Rise was telling us the other day about another guy that she'd been starting to think about, weren't you, Rise-chan?" Was Minako imagining things, or was there just a little bit of malice in Yukiko's normally friendly voice?

"Uh…no, I wasn't," countered Rise, unconvincingly. "There aren't any guys around here that are really my type."

"Oh, really? Yukiko wasn't giving up that easily. "Are you sure? I really thought I heard you asking over lunch the other day if Yosuke knew whether or not Junpei was seeing anybody..."

Minako opened her mouth in surprise. "Junpei?" she asked. "Really, Rise?"

Rise's lack of response was all the response what Minako needed.

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Author's Note: **So, as I was just PMing to the wonderful **Meia42**, this story is…huge. There is so much plot in this story that I have had to get myself a special bag designed only to carry the notebooks and outlines that I've been writing about this story. I think, for that reason, that it is very likely that this will eventually evolve into a trilogy, with **What Cannot Be Broken** being the first, **Bondswoman** being the second, and the addition of an eventual, mysterious third fic. Now, mind you, the plot is staying the same, I haven't added, changed, or prolonged anything. It just looks like it might be easier to tell all of the story and plot that I want to tell with more than one fic. Besides, there's something very neat and tidy about trilogies. But I digress.

*drumroll please* Presenting the return of Tohru Adachi!

…maybe if I kill him off in chapter sixteen, I won't have to edit his dialogue anymore…yeah, let's go ahead and do that.

**Chapter Fifteen**

"What?" Rise sounded a little defensive. "I mean…is there something wrong with me liking Junpei?"

Minako shook her head. "No," she assured her, "There isn't. It's just that I've known him such a long time, so it's hard for me to-!"

"Oh, come on! You've got your own guy right now." Rise's voice was rising slightly, and Minako began to wonder if maybe she'd ventured into something that she didn't want a part of after all. "Besides, not only are you dating Shinjiro-san, but even Yosuke has a little bit of a-!

"Hey, Rise!" Chie cut her off. "Come on, you don't need to tell her that."

Rise took a deep breath. "Sorry," she mumbled. "Anyway. It's not like you don't have enough men for yourself, right?"

Very gently, making sure to keep her tone as neutral and friendly as she could, Minako strayed farther into unfamiliar territory. "You totally misunderstood me," she insisted. "Rise, I'm not interested in Junpei. Junpei's like my stupid big brother. It's just really hard for me to imagine someone seeing him…like a man, you know?" She pointedly did not mention that the only person she thought he'd ever dated was Chidori, whom he'd been so head over heels in love with that she'd been sure it would never end. Somehow, Minako was certain that Rise didn't need to hear about that right now. If things progressed, and Rise got her way, Junpei would tell her about it eventually. "He's a great guy," she continued. "I mean, he'd treat you really well."

"Oh. I'm…I'm sorry," muttered Rise sheepishly. "I got carried away. These two have been teasing me about it so much, and I don't even want to tell you about what Yosuke said when I asked if Junpei was single. Everybody thinks he is, but…um, I don't know how to make him notice me. Normally, it isn't so hard…"

Minako stifled a laugh, remembering the incident at the Christmas party the year before. "Trust me," she assured Rise, "he notices you. He's been noticing you for a while. Junpei's dense. You may have to make the first move."

"Then, how about a double date?" Yukiko jumped eagerly back into the conversation. "Minako, you bring Shinjiro, and then Rise can ask Junpei. That would make it so much less awkward!"

"That," Chie assured her, "would probably make it so much more awkward. I don't think I've heard Shinjiro-san say more than six words to anyone, ever. Not even to you, Minako."

That, thought Minako, was true, at least. Shinjiro wasn't much for small talk, and bringing him on a double date with Junpei and the effusive Rise would probably be akin to torturing him. Although she knew he'd go along if she asked him, Minako couldn't imagine herself actually doing it. It would just be too cruel.

"Will you talk to him for me?" asked Rise. "I mean…you know, will you ask him what he thinks about me?" Minako heard the wheedling, slightly pleading note in her voice, and was forcibly reminded of her own high school days, when she had contemplated asking Mitsuru if the older girl would consider sounding out Akihiko on whether or not he liked her.

"Of course I will," she promised. Not, she thought, that she really needed to. Junpei would definitely be interested in the idea of a popular teenage idol having a crush on him.

Minako spent a few minutes trying on clothes at the girls' request, and eventually took their suggestions, and made a few purchases that they assured her were in excellent taste. Chie, Yukiko, and Rise also tried on clothes, and the four girls walked out of the store fully laden with boxes and bags.

"Hmm," murmured Rise thoughtfully. "How is Junpei at fetching and carrying? He looks pretty strong, and he's good in a fight, but what I really need is someone to help me shop…"

Yukiko laughed. "Love is hard," she sighed, only partially joking."You're lucky that you've already got it all worked out, Minako."

The slight twinge of discomfort that had been making its way through Minako's stomach ever since the conversation had begun finally reared its ugly head, and flared up into full-fledged chagrin. Until recently, she would probably have agreed with Yukiko that, yes, she did have it all worked out. Now, though…

"Hey, guys?" she asked, on a whim. "What would you say if I told you that I had…started having feelings for someone else?"

There was a pause. The other three girls stopped walking, and Minako stopped as well, afraid of losing them or leaving them behind.

"Someone else?" asked Chie. "Who else?"

Minako couldn't' decide if she was glad or sorry that she'd spoken up. The deafening silence of Yukiko and Rise was a little bit disturbing. "It's nobody you know," she assured them, hoping that didn't make it worse. "I met someone at the shopping district. He's older."

Unexpectedly, Yukiko laughed, and Rise blew out a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness," murmured Yukiko around a giggle. "I was afraid you were going to say that it was Yosuke."

Surprised, Minako asked, "You're…not mad at me?"

"Who, us?" Rise snorted. "Are you kidding? Minako, I know your life's been really hard, but you're seventeen! You're still young! I don't think you should have to be stuck to just one person. You and I, we still have tons of life to experience. There's no way we can make those kind of 'forever' decisions right now."

Yukiko, sounding slightly less sure of herself, remarked, "I don't' know, Rise…Shinjiro-san really loves her. Maybe it is possible to find someone to spend your life with, even if we are just out of high school. If I had something like that, I wouldn't want to give it up."

Chie groaned. "Ugh, come on, guys, enough talking about this! There just aren't enough interesting men around, Inaba is so small. Maybe we'll meet someone in college. If not," she added gloomily, "My aunt Hirami says that cats can be great companions. I think she has seven of them…"

Even Minako protested that statement. Maybe she was having trouble sorting things out in her head right now, but spending the rest of her life alone with seven cats was absolutely not part of any plan she could come up with.

The girls rode the train home together, and, waving and calling enthusiastic farewells, eventually went their separate ways. Minako, holding two heavy bags of mysterious clothing purchases, made her way through the shopping district, thinking carefully about the things that Yukiko and Rise had said. It wasn't that they'd given her very good advice. In fact, Yukiko and Rise had both said totally different things about her problem, leaving her, essentially, right back in the middle where she'd started. Still, all of this talk had provided her with some food for thought. Yukiko and Rise had, essentially, both been right. She was young. It was her time to experiment and figure things out. Still, what if Shinjiro really did end up being the one?

The bags seemed to be getting heavier the farther she walked, and Minako began to wonder if she might be able to consolidate them, to make them easier to carry. Placing one on the ground beside her, she knelt down to rearrange her things.

"Not there, dumbass," muttered Tohru. The bag was picked up and pushed back into her hands. "That's not even on the sidewalk anymore. Jeez, I thought blind people were supposed to be better at this. Don't you have crazy ninja senses or something? How come you can't tell where the street is?"

Minako's heart stopped, then started, then skipped another beat. "Are you following me?" she demanded.

"Heh," Tohru sounded amused. "I have to ask; how do you want me to answer that?"

Good question, thought Minako. "I want you to say no," she told him.

"Now you're lying," Tohru accused her. "It's not cute when you lie like that."

Minako wanted to tell him that she didn't care if he thought she was cute or not, but knew that, again, it would be a lie if she did. Instead, rather than engage with him, she collected her bags, stood up, and started walking off as quickly as she could. The sooner she got away from him, the sooner she could get home, unpack her bags, and stop thinking about him. He'd made it clear to her that he was bad news, and it was time for her to start listening to the rational part of her brain, and believe him.

"Wait," called Tohru, and the tinge of amusement had left his voice. Minako stopped in her tracks before she'd consciously figured out what to tell her feet. Damn, she thought.

"Hey, listen," he said, taking a few steps to catch up with her. "Blind girl, I need to ask you something."

"Then stop pretending you don't remember my name," she countered.

Tohru said nothing for a moment, and then, in a lower voice, he muttered, "M-Minako."

Minako tried not to let the chill run down her spine as he said it. "What do you want?" she asked.

"I…uh…" Now, for some reason, Tohru seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. Make up your mind, thought Minako. "Why'd you kiss me?" he asked finally, spitting the question out all in one go. "Why would you do something stupid like that, anyway? I don't get it. After everything I told you, you still…are you really just an idiot? Is that all?"

Something about the way he phrased it caught Minako's attention. She would have believed that he was taunting her with the question, trying to embarrass her or rile her up, except for the way he'd finished the sentence. It was the word "all" that gave him away, as well as the vaguely, barely audible note of hopefulness that had crept, almost unnoticed, into that final word.

"No," she said simply. "I'm not an idiot." It was because I wanted to kiss you, she wanted to say. It was because I heard the pain in your voice, and I, like so many crazy, poorly guided women, am drawn to sufferers and people who need my help. I'm drawn to you. It's because there's something about you. I did it because…

"I don't know why," she told him, and it was an honest answer. "Can I go now?"

"Everything you see," said Tohru. "It's all just pictures in your head, right? You make it up. So what do I look like now, huh? Now that you know I really am a freak who takes advantage of teenage girls. What does a monster look like to a blind girl?" There was a hard-edge to his joking tone now that made it sound as though he was steeling himself for a blow.

Minako shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "I've still never seen one. I"m pretty sure they don't wear ties, though."

A brief moment of silence went by before Tohru laughed. It was a quiet, desperate laugh, with a hint of the same nervousness that she remembered from the time she'd met him on the riverbank. "I want to be that guy," he muttered. "I want to be the person you keep pretending I am. I think you're going to drive me insane...unless I'm insane already. I don't know..."

Oh, good, thought Minako. That makes two of us.

She knew that now, she could walk away. Turning around, she headed for home, calling over her shoulder as she went, "You can start by buying me that ice cream that you owe me. Oh, and quit following me. Creepy, scary people lurk on street corners. Normal people don't. Maybe that's where you should start. If you want to talk to me, then ask me out like a normal person."

Tohru laughed again, and said teasingly, "Okay. You asked for it. Maybe I will," giving Minako a little thrill that made her all the more aware of the fact that she shouldn't be here.

Feeling slightly proud of herself for breaking away, she started back along the path to her house, wondering in the back of her mind if he would take her up on that offer.

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Author's Note: **I wish locking this guy up meant that I didn't have to write his dialogue anymore, but no. Oh, no. No, this will, in fact, only make the situation worse.

Well, at least in the next couple of chapters we'll have Nanako and Minako in the same place, so there will be no split scenes or POV changes. That's a help, right?

**Chapter Sixteen**

The next day was Saturday, and Minako took the opportunity to sleep late. She woke up long after she normally would have, tucked into Shinjiro's arms, listening to him trying not to snore. When she shifted position, some of his unruly hair drifted into her face, tickling her. As carefully as she could, aware that Shinjiro, too, could probably use a morning to sleep in, Minako snuck out of the bed, and wandered into the kitchen.

It was and had always been an unspoken rule that the kitchen was Shinjiro's realm, a place where Minako did not interfere without express permission. Normally, Minako didn't mind at all, aware that of the two of them, Shinjiro was the much more talented chef. This morning, however, Minako wanted to give cooking a try. Shinjiro got up early and made breakfast for her every morning, and this morning she was hoping she might have a chance to do something nice for him.

Just as she was in the process of pulling over a chair, to try and reach the place where she thought Shinjiro still kept the flour, the pain in her head began again, and Minako had to jump down quickly from the chair to prevent herself from falling over in the throes of the horrible headache. She sat on the ground for a few minutes, holding her head, until the ache began to recede again, and she was at least able to stand back up.

Taking a deep breath, Minako started to get back up on to the chair, and then stopped. Honestly, she told herself, this was probably a waste of her time. If Shinjiro had really wanted her messing around in his kitchen, wouldn't he have put the ingredients on shelves that she could actually reach? If she fell of the chair or began knocking things around while she tried to make breakfast, he'd probably end up getting angry at her for messing up his system. No doubt he'd find the opportunity to explain to her that she, being disadvantaged and incapable, should have asked him for help. If she tried to explain to him that she'd wanted to surprise him, he'd kiss her, shrug it off, and explain that she didn't need to surprise him. All she had to do was sit around and be waited on, of course, just like she did every other morning.

Having completely lost interest in making breakfast, Minako returned quietly to her bedroom, and got dressed in silence instead. She poured herself some cereal, ate it as quickly as she could, and then set out for the shopping district without any real plan. Junpei, she knew, would be working today. She might be able to go and visit him at Daidara's. It had been a while since she'd been to the old man's art gallery. Maybe she didn't need weapons anymore, but there were still some pretty pieces on display there, and Junpei was usually glad of any distraction.

She had just begun heading in that direction when she overheard a couple of women's voices talking excitedly somewhere to her left.

"I'm so glad," one of them was saying, "that they finally caught him. I've been having trouble sleeping at night, worrying about some strange man breaking in through my window!"

"Wouldn't that be a nice change?" asked the other voice, with more than a hint of malice in it. "It's been years since you've had a man over, as far as I know."

Minako didn't really listen to the first woman's indignant rebuttal. She was still caught up on what they had been talking about. There was only one person whom she knew of that anyone would talk about like that. Could it be true? Had they really caught Adachi?

"Excuse me," she asked, striding over in the direction of the voices. "I'm so sorry to interrupt, but did I hear you say that they finally caught the murderer?"

"Oh, yes, dear," said the second woman. "I saw on the news that they picked him up in the middle of the night last night. I, for one, am proud of our hardworking police force. It's good to know that we can rely on them to safeguard us here in Inaba."

Minako thanked the women, and changed course immediately, deciding to go over to Junes instead of stopping at Daidara's. Yosuke would be thrilled to hear about Adachi's capture. Just in case he hadn't heard yet, Minako wanted to be the one to tell him the good news.

It wasn't until she'd already passed the entrance to the flood plain that she considered going to have a look. Last night she hadn't exchanged more than twenty words with Tohru, and although she was still proud of herself for blowing him off so effectively, she was more than a little eager to see what he'd made of her implied invitation. She wouldn't she promised herself, have too much to do with him. She wouldn't let him drag her into a confusing moment, like he had so many times before. She just wanted to go and talk to him. Maybe he too would be interested in hearing that Adachi had finally been captured.

As far as she could tell when she arrived on the flood plain, however, there was no one there. Minako, who had half expected Tohru to be there waiting for her, spent a moment reminding herself that she shouldn't expect random men to get up early in the morning and to stand around waiting for her in a place where they hadn't even agreed to meet. It was very self-centered of her, in fact, to assume that he'd have done just that. Minako silently reminded herself not to let his attentions give her too big of an ego boost.

Just as she was about to turn around and start back towards Junes, her foot squelched down into a puddle of liquid mess on the ground, and then crunched and broke something that felt almost like cardboard. Leaning down, she gingerly brushed at the cardboard thing with two fingers, and discovered that it was the remains of a dropped ice cream cone. She reached around a bit more, and found that, not more than a foot away from the ice cream, a crushed bouquet of flowers was lying on the ground.

More aware than most of her legal duties, probably due to Dojima's constant harping on the subject, Minako carefully picked up and disposed of the flowers and the cone, leaving the spatter of ice cream where it lay. It seemed as though someone's date had gone awry, resulting in some abandoned litter. That thought reminded Minako of the conversation that she'd had with Rise the night before, and the fact that Rise had asked her to sound out Junpei about it, which left Minako now uncertain where she wanted to go next. Should she chase Yosuke down, even though he'd probably already heard the news from the Junes patrons, or should she instead go and embarrass Junpei in front of his employer with Rise's latest confession?

Luckily for Minako, she never actually had to make the decision. As she was walking back up from the flood plain, a set of running footsteps came to a stop right in front of her, and a male voice announced, "Arisato-san! We've caught him, we've finally caught Adachi! You've gotta come to the station right away, Dojima-san's going to want your help."

It was one of the other policemen from the station, and Minako hurried to oblige him, following along as he led her quickly through the streets towards her workplace. "We got him real early this morning," the policeman was telling her eagerly, taking her by the arm to help her navigate through the people, cats, and dogs that were populating the streets on this Saturday morning. "We figured he'd be doing a better job of hiding out, but he was standing around in plain sight down on the flood plain. Cocky bastard apparently figured nobody could catch him, so he didn't even have to be careful…"

They arrived at the station, and Minako hurried inside, expecting to hear Dojima barking boisterous orders at anyone and everyone. She was positive he'd be delighted and triumphant about the soon-to-be celebrated capture of Adachi.

For some reason, however, the station was very quiet, and Dojima didn't seem to be in evidence at all. When she asked one of the security guards where she might find him, the guard led her over towards the holding cell where drunks and rowdy partygoers were sometimes kept overnight.

"Arisato," mumbled Dojima distractedly. "Glad you're here. Sorry to drag you in on a Saturday."

"Its fine, sir," insisted Minako, shaking her head. "I hear you've finally caught the murderer! So, I assume that you'll want me to-!"

Someone sucked in a short, surprised breath, and then Minako heard a low, dark, familiar laugh coming from the area of the holding cells. "No way," muttered Tohru. "This is…this is too perfect. You're a policewoman? Jeez, I had no idea. I was playing an even more dangerous game than I thought."

"Tohru?" asked Minako. "Is that you? What are you doing-?"

Then, suddenly, in a wave of realization that had probably been a long time in coming, Minako understood. She thought back about all the comments that he'd made about being a monster, about the fact that she never seemed to meet him during daylight hours, and about the strange, muffled voice she'd heard when they'd first met outside Shiroku pub. The penny dropped, the pieces fit together, and the mystery was belatedly solved.

"No," she murmured, as the bottom dropped slowly and sickeningly out of her world. "No, that's not…you're not…"

"Heh, surprise," muttered Tohru Adachi.

**Meanwhile, at the Dojima residence…**

"Is it true?" asked Nanako, when Yu finally came down the stairs to the breakfast table. "Did they really find Adachi-san?" Dad had been gone when she'd woken up that morning, and when she'd turned on the TV, his triumphant capture of the Inaba murderer had been all over the news.

"I think so." Yu looked exhausted, and there were creases under his eyes that looked to Nanako like a lack of sleep.

"Oh," she said. "What's wrong? You look awful." Correcting herself quickly, she added, "No, I mean, you look really tired. Did you have trouble sleeping? Do you want some coffee?"

Yu took a seat at the table, rubbing his head and frowning. "No," he murmured, "thank you, Nanako. I'm fine. Uncle Dojima woke me up in the middle of the night last night when he left. I must not have gotten enough real sleep, because now I have this terrible headache…"

That left Nanako in a difficult position. On one hand, her cousin had a terrible headache, which meant that she really should stay home and try to help him feel better. On the other hand, if it was true that Adachi had finally been caught, then Nanako was worried about her dad. He wasn't going to be very happy, standing and interrogating his former partner in the police station all alone. Of course, Dad always loved to play the big, bluff cop, out to get his man, but Nanako knew that the Adachi case had really bothered him, and that he'd probably be pretty upset.

"Um," she said distractedly. "Well, coffee doesn't really help headaches, so…maybe some tea? Tea is good for headaches, right"

Yu wheeled his chair over to Nanako's side, and kissed her on the forehead. "It's okay," he said. "Go on. I'll be here when you get back."

"Oh!" said Nanako, "wait, I have an idea. Why don't you come with me? Maybe they have some tea at the station. Dad doesn't drink tea, but I know some people do."

"I don't think I need to go all the way over to the police station to get some tea," Yu informed her. "Still, Nanako, if you want to go together, that's fine. You should know, though, that Uncle Dojima is probably going to ask us to leave. You know how he feels about his work."

Nanako knew perfectly well how he felt about his work, and simply chose not to care. After all, work was one thing, but family was another, and right now, Dad was going to need all of the family that he could find. Good thing she and Yu were on their way to save the day.

"I'll push," she said, positioning herself behind Yu's chair.

"No, you'll ride," said Yu, pulling her carefully around on to his lap. "You're not too old for that yet, are you? Besides, it's a long way. We're going to take the bus."

**Chapter Seventen**

**Author's Note: **This interim chapter was fun to write because of Junpei, who I love and absolutely missed writing about.

I will probably now spend the next two weeks trying to finish writing the next chapter, which contains a giant, complicated Adachi characterization moment, complete with a lot of Minako, a lot of Yu and Nanako, and even a little bit of angsty Dojima.

I had honestly considered trying it tonight , but the task is such a daunting one that I'm afraid it will have to wait until after rehearsal tomorrow evening. For now, enjoy Junpei!

**Chapter Seventeen**

Minako stood frozen for a few minutes, trying to let the shock pass through and roll out of her again. It was Dojima's voice that finally broke through her stupor.

"Arisato," he said, sounding slightly alarmed. "Hey, snap out of it. What's going on? Do you two know each other?"

Again, Tohru laughed that desperate little laugh of his, and hearing it made Minako feel as though she might suddenly throw up.

"No," she told Dojima hurriedly. "No, I don't think we do. I'm sorry, sir, I've had a stomach ache all morning, I need to…I'll just be a minute." Without waiting for a response, she turned around, and headed towards the door. She was so focused on getting as far away as she could that she must have failed to hear the wheels approaching, and she ended up smacking right into and almost falling over on top of Yu, who was coming in through the station door.

"Eek!" squeaked Nanako, who was apparently sitting on Yu's lap, right where Minako would have fallen if she hadn't managed to catch herself against the armrest of the chair. "Oh no! What's wrong? You look scared! Are you okay?"

No, thought Minako. No, I am not okay. I am a stupid, blind, idiot, in more ways than one. "Yes," she said instead. "Yes, I'm all right, thank you, Nanako-chan. Are you here to see Dojima-san?"

"Um…okay." Nanako still didn't sound convinced. "Yeah, I want to find Dad. Is he here?"

"He's over by the holding cell," murmured Minako distractedly.

She heard Nanako's feet touch the ground, and then head off at a run in the direction that she'd indicated, leaving Minako and Yu alone. "You're not all right," Yu told her, and his tone of voice left no reasonable room for her to protest. "Something happened. What's wrong?"

Yu, thought Minako, was always so caring, always so friendly, always so rational. She recalled what she and Yosuke had discussed, about Yu being perhaps the perfect example of a human being. If there was anyone on earth that she could talk to about this, who would really understand the mistake she had made, it was probably Yu.

"This…is going to be a long story," she began.

Before she had a chance to even begin the story, however, someone else came pounding through the station entrance, panting from exertion and apparent haste.

"Where is he?" asked Yosuke, the hate dripping out of his voice with every syllable. "Where's that son of a bitch Adachi? Is it true? Did they really catch him?" After a brief pause, he added, in a very slightly calmer voice, "Oh, Minako. Hey. What are you doing here?"

"I work here," Minako reminded him.

Yosuke took a deep breath. "Yeah," he muttered. "Right. Sure. So, you've got him, right?"

"Yes," agreed Minako. "We've got him. He's in the holding cell."

Yosuke, she thought, wasn't much like his usual self. He was frantic, fidgety, and very different from the reluctantly competent leader-in-training that she so regularly saw in him. "We've gotta get in there and make sure that there aren't any TVs," he insisted. "No monitors. You guys have monitors all over the place, here. I need to talk to Dojima-san." With that, he ran off after Nanako.

"I have a headache," muttered Minako.

"Yeah," said Yu. "So do I. Let's-!"

For the second time, Yu was cut off by the arrival of several people, all of whom began talking at once.

"Yukiko called me!" announced Chie. "Is he locked up? There aren't any TVs in the police station, are there? Oh, man…"

"I heard it on the news," murmured Yukiko. "I wonder how they managed to get him so fast…maybe he just got careless?" She sounded uncertain, as though she didn't really believe that Adachi was the sort of person who could be 'careless' about something like this.

Kanji, Rise, and eventually even Naoto added their voices to the cacophony, and Minako's headache, which had been steadily subsiding for the past half hour, began to throb and burn again. As the noise got worse, so did the pain, until she began to feel clustered and trapped by the crowd of her friends that had suddenly appeared to surround her and Yu.

It was Junpei's raised voice that finally broke through the chaos. "Hey, Mina-tan," he said. "You're shaking, dude."Does your head hurt again? Oh, man, you look awful…"

"Maybe you should take her out of here," suggested Yu.

Junpei's arm was around Minako's shoulders, and then he was leading her through the group and out of the doors into the refreshingly unpopulated morning air. Minako didn't protest when he sat her down on the curb, and then threw himself down next to her.

"Breathe," he instructed her. "Do you want me to call Shinjiro-san? If it's really bad, we can ask him to bring those pain meds you take."

Frantically, Minako shook her head, and then winced as the abrupt motion made her headache worse. "No," she mumbled. "Please, don't call him. I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"Yeah, like hell," muttered Junpei. "All right, don't freak out, I won't call him. What, did you and he have a fight or something?"

It wasn't, thought Minako, that she didn't want to see Shinjiro. She just couldn't imagine trying to talk to Shinjiro right now. She couldn't face him in the midst of the confused, frightened feelings that had taken over ever since Tohru's true identity had revealed itself. How could she look Shinjiro in the eye, when all along she knew that she'd been spending the past few days daydreaming about a serial murderer?

"Oh, god," she muttered.

Junpei sighed. "Yeah," he said, "I thought that might be it. Come on, you can tell me about it. I don't know much about love and stuff, but if he's not treating you right, you know I'll beat the shit out of him for you."

"No…" Minako shook her head, much more gently this time. "No, it's nothing like that. He didn't do anything wrong. It's all my fault. This whole stupid mess is all my fault."

"Tell me," insisted Junpei. "We'll figure it out, right?"

Minako told him. Under normal circumstances, even in Junpei's case, she probably wouldn't have spilled the whole story, but the combination of the panic and the pain in her head was making everything hard to tolerate and understand. It was such a relief to finally say out loud some of the things that she'd been thinking and feeling that all of the words ended up coming out in a rushed, jumbled pile, until Minako wasn't honestly sure what parts of the story she'd told, and what parts she'd saved or omitted. When all of the words and feelings had finally come out, and the story was over, she stopped and waited with more than a little dread for Junpei's response. It wasn't too long in coming.

"Wow," he said, releasing a long, slow breath.

Minako waited some more. After a moment, she asked, "That's…that's it? Aren't you angry?"

"Course I'm angry," Junpei muttered. "I'm angry as shit, listening to you tell me how that punk Adachi tried to take advantage of you. Doesn't matter much now, though. He's locked up, and you're not hurt, so…but next time, you call me, okay? You better promise me, too. If I thought I could get away with it, maybe I'd go take a slug at him right now, but Dojima-san probably won't stand for that kind of thing. Might be worth a try anyway." For a moment, Junpei's voice rose, and Minako could her a very familiar note of barely contained fury in it that reminded her of the many times she'd watched her best friend lose his temper when they'd been back at Gekkoukan together. Taking one more quick breath, he apparently calmed himself down, and his next words came out with the forced friendliness of a man who was making an effort not to make a scene. "Heh. Well. Like I said. There's not much point in thinking about it, now."

"I…kissed a serial killer," Minako reminded him, feeling that perhaps she'd been speaking too quickly and wildly for him to figure that out the first time. "I offered to go on a date with the man who murdered Yosuke's ex-girlfriend, and some other poor woman. What kind of person does that make me?"

Junpei seemed to think about that for a moment. "I don't know what kind of answer you want to that question," he said finally. "I mean, it's not like you knew who he really was. You just made a mistake, that's all."

"Junpei…" Minako exhaled a breath that she'd been holding back, and rested her head on his shoulder. "Thank you. I needed someone to say that."

"Good." Junpei sounded almost as relieved as Minako. "Because honestly, I wasn't sure if that was what I was supposed to say."

Minako almost laughed, and Junpei gave her a little squeeze around the shoulders. "It's over now, anyway," he assured her.

Minako, however, wasn't quite convinced. Trying to keep the edge of dread out of her tone, she asked him, "And…you aren't going to tell Shinji?"

This time, Junpei's voice had a little more sternness to it than she'd expected, evidence of the fact that he really was a few years older than her. "Nope," he replied, "I'm not, but…I don't want to be around if he finds out from somebody who isn't you, you know? The two of you are gonna have to figure this one out without my help." That was, of course, recognized Minako, a very valid point. She cringed at the very idea of talking to Shinjiro about any of this, but it would be even more terrible if she didn't tell him, and let him figure things out on his own. After the way she'd panicked and stumbled out of the station just now, it wouldn't be long before everyone started talking about what had been wrong with her. Yukiko, Rise, and Chie already knew that there was another man in the picture, so wouldn't they be able to piece two and two together?

"Ugh," mumbled Minako, biting her lip.

Junpei laughed. "Don't worry," he said. "He's so crazy about you, it's almost obsessive. Not in a creepy way, or anything, just….you know, he cares a lot. A whole lot. It's not like he's going to leave you, right? You're everything he has going for him."

That, unfortunately. did not make Minako feel any better. In fact, it almost made her feel worse, if that was possible.

"Listen," Junpei continued. "Why don't you blow off work today? I'll call Daidara-san, tell him it's a family emergency, and we'll, uh…we'll go to the beach, or something. You could use a break. I could use a break. It's a win-win situation."

He was trying to cheer her up, she knew, and yet for all that it sounded appealing, Minako was aware that today would be a terrible day to make a run for it. If there was any time that Dojima might need her at her desk, it was today. "No," she told him, "no, I'm all right now. Thank you, Junpei. I…you're the best. I need to go back to work, now."

As Minako stood up to head back to the station, feeling at least a little more controlled after her talk, Junpei stood up as well. "Are you sure?" he asked doubtfully. "Are you really gonna be okay in there, around him?"

Minako was reasonably certain that she wasn't, but that didn't change the fact that she had things that she had to do. "Honestly," she lied, "It'll be okay now. I just needed to get all of this off of my chest, I think."

As they walked together back through the police station doors, Minako turned in Junpei's direction, and said, "Please…don't tell anyone about what I told you, okay? It's…well, Yosuke, for example, probably wouldn't like it very much."

"Hah." Junpei snorted. "Understatement of the year. Anyway, who do you think you're talking to? My lips, Mina-tan, are sealed."

The throng of people had dispersed somewhat, and Minako found it a little easier to make her way through the doors and across the main hallway. She could tell by their voices that Yu and Yosuke were still there, chatting in hushed tones until Minako got close enough to overhear their conversation.

"I've gotta go," Yosuke told her, still using the hard, slightly breathless voice she'd heard when he'd first rushed in. "I need to get back to work. See you later, Minako." With that Yosuke walked off. She heard Junpei's grunt of acknowledgement as the two of them apparently met by the doors.

"Feeling better?" asked Yu. "You look a little better."

When she was honest with herself, Minako had to admit that, no; she did not exactly feel better. What she did feel was less alone, which was definitely a step in the right direction. Every time the idea of image of Tohru Adachi entered her head, she still got a little bit of a queasy desire to bolt, but now, at least, she wasn't carrying the secret in silence anymore. "Yes," she replied. A little. Thanks."

"That's good," Yu told her, "because I think there's probably a long day ahead of us. Uncle Dojima was looking for you a few minutes ago. You'll probably find him at the holding cell again."

Resisting the urge to beg, "Do I have to?" Minako swallowed and nodded. "Right," she said, making an effort to sound brighter and more enthusiastic than she really felt. "Okay, well. Back to work I go."

Just as Minako was turning around to leave, she felt Yu's hand on her shoulder. "Do you want me to come?" he asked.

Minako thought about that for a moment. "No," she said slowly. "Not…not yet." Something had just begun to occur to her, something that she both wanted and feared to try out. What was it that Tohru had said to her, when they'd first gone down to the riverbank together? Was she remembering it correctly, and if so, could it be that she was right about what he'd meant?

"Will you be here for a little while?" she asked Yu. "I'd like for you to wait for me, if that's okay."

"Sure," said Yu obligingly. "We may be here all day. I don't think Nanako is going to want to leave with Uncle Dojima. Do what you need to do."

**Chapter Eighteen**

**Author's Note:**

Now that Adachi is finally locked up, we can return for a while to focusing on the shadows inside Minako and Yu's heads. Next chapter, we'll be finally hearing from Dojima, who I love and have been looking forward to writing. After that, it's back to the Velvet Room.

But for now…well, here's this chapter. Writing about Adachi makes me want to do the same thing Nanako does in this chapter. Again, please keep in mind that I am new at this, and that this chapter is a work in progress.

I'm performing frequently this week, so updates will be sporadic. I'll post one on Wednesday, but nothing on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday due to the show schedule. Thanks for your patience, and for all of your wonderful commentary and friendship!

**Chapter Eighteen**

The day wore on. Minako sat dutifully at her desk, relaying messages, making calls, and brewing a disturbing amount of coffee while Dojima, apparently, interrogated the prisoner. Every so often, the detective would emerge from the area of the cells. He would then drink another cup of coffee in two convulsive gulps, and growl unintelligibly at someone before disappearing again. This had been going on for hours.

Nanako, despite her many protests, had not been allowed to go anywhere near the cells. Unwilling to leave her father alone, she was now sitting at the end of Minako's desk, drawing on some scrap paper with a collection of crayons that one of the other employees had found for her.

At first, Minako had tried to get Nanako to go home, but eventually the diligent scratching of Nanako's crayons against the paper became a comforting background to the thoughts that Minako was doing her best not to think.

"Minako?" asked Nanako hesitantly. "Um, may I please use your scissors?"

Minako frowned. "Is it okay for you to have scissors?" she asked.

That appeared to have been the wrong thing to say. Minako could hear the injured pride in Nanako's voice as the girl informed her, "Of course It is! I'm not a little kid."

Making an effort to stifle her smile, Minako fumbled in her desk drawer until she found the scissors, and handed them over. "Try not to make a mess of my desk, okay?" she implored. "It's hard for me to clean up little bits of paper."

"Don't worry," replied Nanako, not entirely reassuringly. "I'll help!"

Before Minako had a chance to answer, however, she heard Dojima's boots clomping towards them, and realized that it was probably time for another coffee break.

"Take a break, Arisato," he commanded, as Minako heard him slump down into his own desk. "C'mere, Nanako. She's not here to babysit you, you know."

"Hey!" exclaimed Nanako indignantly.

Minako hastened to reassure them both. "It's no trouble," she insisted. "Honestly, sir, I'm enjoying the company."

"Yeah, well," said Dojima. "Thanks, I guess." He sounded tired, and what was more he sounded beaten down, something that Minako couldn't ever remember hearing in his voice before. No wonder, she thought, that Nanako didn't want to leave him.

Preparing to take her break, Minako stood up and crossed the room to retrieve her bag. Just as she was turning to head for the out the station doors, however, Nanako's smaller hand pressed a piece of paper into hers.

"When you see him," said Nanako, "give him this, okay?"

Minako knew that Nanako must be talking about Adachi, who Minako was certainly not planning on going to see. She opened her mouth to protest, but then remembered the questions she'd wanted to ask him, when she'd first asked Yu to wait for her at the station. Eventually, she was going to have to face him, or she knew that she might never be able to sleep again. Maybe now would be better than later. The sooner she was sure about him, the sooner this would all be over, and the sooner she could put this whole nightmarish situation behind her.

With all of that in mind, Minako turned around and headed back towards the cells. There was no sound coming from the place where she knew the prisoner was being held, and she stood there in silence for a moment, wondering what she should say.

"Oh, it's you," sneered Tohru. "Did you come to see the freak show? But, wait, I guess you can't."

"I…" began Minako. This, she realized, had not been a good idea after all. She was not ready for this conversation. "I have a question," she managed.

"Just one?" asked Tohru, with a short laugh. "Okay, shoot, but only if I get to ask one, too."

What, wondered Minako, could he possibly have to ask her? "Fine," she told him. "It's about all those things you told me when we met, about how you were in Inaba because a friend of yours had died. Was that true?"

"Actually, yeah," said Tohru. "It was. Everything I told you, pretty much, was the truth. I can't help it if you were too much of a dumbass to ask the right questions."

Trying to ignore the taunt, Minako nodded. "I want to show you something," she said.

She turned around to leave the cells, but Tohru's voice called out after her. "Wait," he insisted. "Now it's my turn to ask you a question."

"I'll be right back,' Minako assured him. She started to cross the room, but was stopped by the sound of wheels rolling against the floor tiles.

"I'm here," said Yu. Minako took his hand, and led him back over to the cell.

She didn't have to say anything. Before she'd even opened her mouth, she heard Tohru's sharp intake of breath.

"Wha-?" he stammered. "No, you're dead. It was all over the papers they gave us. How could you be-?"

"Surprise" murmured Minako.

Yu wheeled himself closer to the bars. "Hello, Adachi-san," he said slowly. "Are you glad to see me?"

"What kind of a stupid question…" muttered Tohru, but he sounded shaken. "So, what is this? Some kind of game? Did you fake your own death to get out of exams, or something?"

"Who cares?" asked Minako. "Do you?"

"No," insisted Tohru. "No, I guess I don't." All the laughter was gone from his voice, now, and Minako remembered the way he'd described Yu at the riverbank, as though the two of them were 'kindred spirits.' At the moment, she was having a hard time seeing a resemblance.

"I never had the chance to really ask you before, not after the final battle," remarked Yu, almost conversationally. His voice was so careful and patient that Minako couldn't help but be impressed by him. How, she wondered, could he manage to stay so calm and unruffled in the face of the man who had tried to kill so many of his friends?

"Ask me what?" snarled Tohru.

"I want to know," Yu insisted. "Why did you do it? Why did you kill those women? Don't say 'because it was fun,' because I know it wasn't fun. It may have been a thrill, but it must also have been scary. You had to know, all the time, that you were risking being caught any minute. So, then, why? What made it worth the risk?"

It was a moment before Tohru said anything at all. Finally, he muttered, "Oh, I see how this is supposed to work. The great Detective Dojima couldn't break me, so he sends in his wiz kid nephew to find out what makes me tick, huh? Why should I tell you anything? It's not like it matters . Either way, I'm going back to jail. Isn't that enough?"

"No," said Yu. "It isn't. I want to understand."

"Trust me, you will." A little shiver ran through Tohru's voice as he said it. "Someday, you'll wake up and you'll get it. You'll figure out what a shithole this world really is, and when you do, you'll think of me."

"Tell me," insisted Yu. Minako couldn't be sure, but she thought she finally heard just al little bit of strain in Yu's patient tones. He's faking it, she realized. He's faking it, and he's doing a very good job.

Tohru sighed. "How do I explain it to a kid like you?" he pondered. "One day, you just sort of look around and realize how meaningless it all is. Nothing matters for more than five minutes, and all those miserable people, working their nine to five jobs and raising their families in the midst of it all, they're all trying so goddamn hard. And for what? For nothing, and a whole lot of nothing, too. After a while, it starts to piss you off, watching the pointless trying, and listening to them talk about how hard work pays off, and how you have to try your best. Nothing's gonna get better. Nothing they do is gonna start to matter, or really make a difference. The world is still gonna suck, and yet nobody seems to be able to figure it out. Maybe I just wanted to shake things up a bit, just to make a point. In the long run, who cares about those women, or about you, or even me? It's all meaningless. Not even you can change that."

There were a few tense moments of silence, which were broken suddenly by an audible sniffle. Minako stiffened in surprise as she heard a pair of smaller feet step quietly over to the cell bars.

"Th-that's so sad," sniffled Nanako. "You're wrong! You're wrong, everything does matter! People matter!" Minako could hear the tears beginning to collect in Nanako's voice, muffling her words, as she choked out, "I hate it! I hate what you said! Why would you say those things? Why are you so sad?"

"N-Nanako-chan," breathed Tohru in surprise.

"Let's go, Nanako." Yu's chair rolled over towards her, and Minako heard his little grunt of exertion as he picked Nanako up and set her on his lap. "You're not supposed to be here. Uncle Dojima will worry."

"But, I wanted-!" sobbed Nanako, as Yu carried her away from the cells. Minako could hear him murmuring soothingly to her while he wheeled her back over to her father's desk. Only then did Minako remember the piece of paper that Nanako had tasked her to deliver to Tohru.

"Here," she said, thrusting the paper at him through the bars. "Nanako wanted you to have this."

Tohru snatched the paper out of her hands, and she listened to the rustling sounds it made as he looked it over.

"Huh," he murmured, more to himself than to Minako. "Her drawing's gotten better since she last did one of these. This actually sorta looks like me. I guess that's the sun right there, and this would be…"

He stopped, and then laughed again, that same desperate, nervous laugh. This time there was a hint of derision in it as well, and Minako sure if that was intended for her or for Tohru himself. "Jeez. The kid drew me a picture. Can you believe that? You think maybe she doesn't know? Maybe Dojima doesn't let her watch the news anymore, or something?"

"I think," said Minako quietly, "that Nanako was right. People do matter. Obviously you mattered to her."

Tohru just kept laughing, his voice rising to an almost hysterical level as he apparently made no effort to control himself. Minako was repulsed, at first, by the laughter, disgusted by the fact that he managed to find something so sickeningly funny in a little girl's affectionate gesture. Then she realized that some of the merriment had begun to turn into choking, strangled sorts of sobs. On an impulse, she reached through the bars to press her fingers to his cheek, and felt the tears coursing down his face even as he continued to laugh helplessly, and his whole body shook with the effort.

"Don't touch me," he spat, recoiling as soon as her fingers brushed against him.

"You're crying," accused Minako.

"And you," retorted Tohru breathlessly, "are a dumbass. I bet you're enjoying this, huh?"

"No," Minako told him honestly. "I'm really not."

Slowly, almost painfully, the laughter subsided into heavy, shuddering breaths. "Yeah," agreed Tohru. "I guess you probably aren't, at that."

Minako waited until he had finally regained some semblance of control.

"So," he asked her, once his voice had stopped shaking. "What are you still doing here? The case is closed. You caught the bad guy. Shouldn't you be out with your police buddies, celebrating or something?"

"You said you wanted to ask me a question," Minako reminded him.

"Right. I did," agreed Tohru. "So, here it is; did you do this? Did you set this up?"

Minako didn't understand. "Did I set what up?" she asked.

"Me," Tohru clarified. "The arrest. This whole operation. I have to admit, I'm impressed. You were good. You were...you were really good." The derision in his voice faded, and just for a moment, Minako could hear in him a sadness that none of the violence of his conversation had allowed her to notice before. "Yeah, you really had me going, for a while there. I almost thought…" He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice had hardened and the sadness was gone. "Anyway, I guess that's why you told me to ask you out last night. You were trying to get me to let my guard down. It was a good plan. Like I said, I'm really impressed."

Minako's head was spinning again. What, she wondered, was Tohru talking about? After all, hadn't he been the one with the plan all along? There was something accusatory in his voice that Minako neither understood nor liked. "I don't know what you're talking about," she assured him. "I didn't have anything to do with your arrest. I didn't even know who you really were."

Tohru was quiet for a moment, and Minako felt the uncomfortable sensation of being closely watched. Then, he sighed. "Yeah," he muttered. "Okay. Either you're an even better actress than I thought, or you just told me the truth."

Unlike you, thought Minako, I don't' make a habit out of telling lies. Then she thought about Shinjiro, and winced. "Why wouldn't I tell the truth?" she asked, mostly to cover her own confusion. "What do I have to hide?"

"Heh." Tohru sounded oddly relieved. "Nothing. It's weird, but…I feel pretty good about that. Maybe you should ask Dojima and your police friends about what they found when they caught me. That might clear some things up for you."

Minako tried to think. She knew that Adachi had been apprehended at the flood plain. Someone had told her that, but who had it been? She couldn't remember. She did know that she'd been to the flood plain earlier that day, maybe only a couple of hours after the arrest had taken place. Minako was sure she'd been there, because she remembered cleaning up the ice cream and the flowers that had been littering the ground.

Suddenly, the truth dawned on Minako's mind, a mind that she knew up until that moment had been fighting tooth and nail to steer clear of that truth. She gasped involuntarily, and Tohru made a satisfied little noise in his throat.

"Yeah, there you go," he said. "Your face says that you've got it now."

"Tohru-san," began Minako, uncertain even as she spoke as to what she wanted to tell him. Part of her wanted to spit on him, to give in to her inherent disgust at the idea of being offered ice cream and flowers by a serial murderer. The other part of her, the unwelcome, persistent part that she couldn't seem to dissuade with rationale and reason, was oddly touched by the image of him standing on the flood plain, waiting nervously for the opportunity to treat her the way she'd asked to be treated.

"Wow," murmured Tohru. "So you can still look at me like that, even after you know the truth?"

Instinctively, Minako turned away from him, cursing herself for being unguarded enough to let her thoughts show on her face. A heavy hand came down on her shoulder, and then Dojima's voice was in her ear.

"Arisato," he ordered. "Come with me."

**Chapter Nineteen**

**Author's Note: **Oh dear, it has been several days since I updated. I'm very sorry about the delay. It has been a very complicated and difficult few days for me, full of both trials and triumphs, and I am really looking forward to sitting down and spending some time happily working on this story.

Thank you very much for your patience! Here, finally, is the next chapter. Stay tuned, I'll post another update tomorrow, this time with extra Nanako.

Oh, by the way! For more insight into my interpretation of the Dojima/Adachi conflict, please feel free to check out these two new extra/one shots I posted recently, called **I Am in Blood**, and **Partners.** I'd love to hear your thoughts on them!

I'd also like to say, I got two amazingly thoughtful and kind reviews from **randomreaderhere** and the elusive **Guest**! Thank you so much for taking the time! I wish I had a way of contacting you personally to answer your questions and thank you properly.

**Chapter Nineteen**

It was with a growing sense of trepidation that Minako followed Dojima back to her desk, uncertain of exactly how much he had overheard. As she sunk into her chair, she could feel the detective's imposing presence looming over her.

"Tell me," he demanded. "What happened between you and Adachi?"

Minako wallowed nervously. "Um, what?" she managed to ask. Apparently, she realized, Dojima had heard more than enough.

"Don't play dumb with me," he insisted. "I saw the way you two looked at each other. How long have you known him? What exactly is the nature of your relationship?"

Those rapid fire questions caused two things to happen in Minako's head at once. For one thing, she didn't like Dojima's tone. He was using his 'interrogation' voice, the voice she so often heard him use with convicted criminals, and she could already feel the hairs on the back of her neck rising in righteous indignation at what she considered to be his inappropriate and unfounded badgering. At the very same time, however, something about what Dojima had just said stuck in her mind. I wonder, she thought, almost against her conscious will, what exactly he means about how Tohru looks at me. Does he look at me in some special way? What sort of special way?

Forcing herself to focus on the task at hand, Minako frowned, and swallowed once before speaking. "With all due respect, Dojima-san," she began, "I don't have to answer questions about my personal life."

Although Minako had known that the answer would hardly delight him, she was surprised by the violence of Dojima's response. Slamming his hand down hard on the desk, he bellowed at her, "The hell you don't!" Either you quit being cute and answer the damn questions, or we can do it the hard way, and I can arrest you for obstruction of justice."

"Obstruction of what justice?" asked Minako, her temper beginning to get the better of her judgment. "I haven't done anything wrong! What exactly are you accusing me of, sir? Do you think that I had something to do with those murders? Or maybe I was the one who helped Adachi escape from prison, is that what you think?"

There was a short, heavy silence, and Minako couldn't be certain whether or not Dojima was about to lock her up and throw into the cells next to Tohru. The tense, quiet moments dragged on into what felt like hours, until, finally, Dojima sighed.

"Minako," he said, in a much more level, controlled tone of voice. "Please. I've done everything I can think of, but I can't make him talk. I am running out of options, and I am running out of time. Help me out. I'm not accusing you of anything. I don't suspect you of being involved in the murders, or the prison break. I'm asking you to do a favor for a very tired, very frustrated old man."

At first, Minako didn't quite understand. She hadn't missed Dojima's tell-tale use of her first name, which was no doubt a tactic intended to help win her sympathies. What she couldn't quite figure out was what exactly he had meant by the phrase "make him talk." "What do you want him to talk about?" she asked. "He already confessed to all of the murders, didn't he? What else do you need to know?"

"I need to know the why," explained Dojima. "I need to understand what drove him to kill those women. I need to get inside of his head to get at the truth of this whole crazy mess. It's been keeping me up at night for over a year. I want to be done with it, to let it go. There has to be an answer for why he did what he did. I won't accept…no. I can't accept that I'll never have that answer."

Dojima sounded more honest and vulnerable than Minako had ever heard him sound before. "Does the 'why' really matter so much?" she asked.

"Yeah," muttered Dojima. "To me, yeah, it does."

Minako, who would have readily categorized herself as a 'bleeding heart,' felt an unexpected kinship forming between her and the dogged older detective. Dojima was eager, even desperate for any scrap of proof that the man he'd once called his partner still contained some of the recognizable qualities of a human being. Maybe if Dojima knew why he'd done it, she reasoned with herself, then he'd be able to rationalize Adachi's actions as something potentially excusable or at the very least, explicable by means of reason. She understood that need all too well. After all, whether she admitted it out loud or not, wasn't that a reprieve that she, too, was hoping to find?

"Okay," she agreed.

As carefully and accurately as she could, Minako described her meeting with Tohru, as well as the brief and confusing series of interactions that had followed. Without being perfectly sure we she did it, she left out the parts about her kissing him, and about him nearly assaulting her at the riverbank. That, she told herself, was probably too racy and too embarrassing to share with her tough-as-nails employer, anyway.

When she'd finished her story, Dojima grumbled something unintelligible under his breath, sounding even more glum and gloomy than he had moments before. "Well," he told her, "that doesn't help much. Still, I guess you didn't get killed, which is something. The way he was following you around at night, you're probably lucky we caught him as fast as we did."

"But, wait," protested Minako, honestly surprised that Dojima hadn't found anything else remarkable in her description of the facts. Hadn't he been listening when she'd explained about how Tohru had saved her life on at least two separate occasions? Or, did Dojima think that Tohru had only been toying with her? For that, matter, she wondered suddenly, was he right? Had Tohru only saved her those two or three times to keep her engaged as a part of his twisted game?

"I need some coffee," Dojima announced. Minako immediately stood up to get it. "No, it's okay," he insisted. "I've beaten you up enough for one day. I'll take care of the coffee. You just…go home. And try not to talk to strangers on your way back, this time."

Pointedly ignoring that last comment, Minako insisted, "No, sir, I don't mind. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to stay here for the rest of the day. At least while I'm working, I can help you and do something useful."

She walked over to the coffee maker, which unfortunately took her past the cells. Although she hurried by as quickly as she could, she could still hear Tohru calling out to her.

"Hey," he said. "Was that you that I heard back there, shouting at Dojima-san? Not too many people have the guts to stand up to him…you're either brave or stupid as hell. That's…actually kinda hot."

"Shut up," she snapped at him.

**Meanwhile, at the Junes food court…**

Nanako argued and objected the entire time that she spent riding with Yu over to the Junes food court. She hadn't, she insisted, been ready to leave yet. There were still things that she wanted to say to Adachi-san, and she didn't want to leave Dad alone, when he was obviously having a really hard time.

"Wow," murmured Teddie, walking over to their table. "What happened? Nana-chan, you look really mad!"

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke, who apparently had also noticed them coming in. "and I have totally seen that look on Nanako's face before, somewhere."

"Minako," Yu reminded him.

Yosuke nodded. "Oh yeah…you're right, that's exactly what Minako looks like when she gets really pissed off at us for worrying too much. I was right. We should never have let the two of them start hanging out together…"

"Hey!" shouted Nanako, aware that no one was really paying any attention to her. "Are you listening? I said, I'm going back!"

"And I said no," insisted Yu quietly, but much more sternly than usual. "Sit down and I'll go and get you a soda."

Nanako stamped her foot. "I don't want a soda!" she announced, but she sat down anyway, and Yu wheeled off to buy her one.

"Hey," began Teddie. "Did you and Sensei get into a big lover's quarrel? Is that it?"

Yosuke smacked an exasperated hand against his forehead. "Ew, gross. Teddie, the word you're looking for is 'sibling rivalry.' At least, uh, I hope it is. Seriously, though, Nanako-chan, are you okay?"

Nanako did not feel okay. She was angry and disappointed, still listening to the things that Adachi-san had said rattling around inside her mind. Still, now that she was sitting down, and feeling at least a little bit more in control of herself, she recognized the need for politeness.

"Yes, I'm okay," she promised them both. Thank you for asking."

"Did Adachi-baby do something scary?" persisted Teddie.

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke, suddenly looking concerned. "He didn't hurt you, did he? What was Dojima-san thinking, anyway, letting a little kid in to see a murderer?"

Nanako bit her lip. "I'm not a little kid," she insisted, for what felt like the one hundredth time that day. "And he's my friend." Hearing herself say that stopped her short. Was that still true, she wondered? Sure, Adachi-san had been her friend once upon a time, when he'd used to spend time with her and Dad at the house, and she'd drawn pictures for him and always let him choose the best sushi first. Now that he was maybe someone else, was he still her friend? How could she tell?

It was too much for her right now, she decided. There were too many frustrating questions and things that she didn't understand. There had to be something she could do to make herself feel better, something that would make her feel as though the world was a place that she could make sense of. If she wasn't allowed to stay and help Dad, she would have to find some other way to fix things. The kind of woman that she knew she was supposed to be growing into wouldn't just sit around at a time like this. Her mother, Chisato, wouldn't have just sat around.

"I'm going to the Velvet Room," she told them.

Yosuke blinked at her. "What, right now? Aren't you, uh, gonna wait for your Big Bro to bring that soda?"

"Of course not," mumbled Nanako, with perfect rationale. "When he comes back, he'll tell me that I can't go. He's always telling me things that I can't do. Let's go right now, before he gets the sodas."

Just having that thought sent a little stab of guilt into Nanako's heart. She loved her Big Bro, more than she loved anyone else in the whole wide world, except maybe for Dad. The very idea that she didn't want to see him for some reason was so foreign to her that it made her instantly sad. Big Bro was and always would be her special hero. It was just that, right now, there was something that she needed to do for herself that there was no way he would understand.

"That's…not a good idea," Yosuke was saying. "He would be so pissed at me if he found out that I took you in there without asking him first."

"That's what we did last time," Nanako reminded him. "And I told him all about that, so it's okay."

"What?" That, for some reason, seemed to make Yosuke even more worried. "You told him about it? I thought that was our secret! Oh, man, now he really is gonna kill me…"

Teddie was looking thoughtful. "If Sensei is going to kill you already," he reasoned slowly, "then it doesn't really matter if we disobey him again, right? So, let's go!'

"No way, hold on. That makes no sense!" Yosuke shouted, but it was too late. Nanako and Teddie were already on their way to the electronics department.

**Chapter Twenty**

**Author's Note: **Double update today! And, as promised, here's lots more Nanako!

Oh, man, I actually did it again…posted an update, got halfway through the second update, and then fell asleep. This time it was **Meai42**'s review that sent the email that woke me up.

Again, I am taking some slight liberties with the fusion. Please bear with and be willing to learn new things! Oh, and don't' worry, we're not going to one-hit kill things forever. I promise.

**Chapter Twenty**

"I'm back!" called Nanako, as soon as she stepped through the door into the Velvet Room. Igor and all three of his assistants looked up, and gave her their polite, almost identically welcoming smiles.

"Welcome back," murmured Theodore. "Is there a way that we might be of service to you, today?"

Nanako pulled the new "Angel" card out of where she'd been hiding it in her pocket. "Can you tell me please," she asked, "what this is? It looks like my Icarus card. Um," she added, suddenly remembering, "I found it when Icarus got rid of that big squid shadow that was trying to get into Big Bro's head. Do I…have to give it back?"

Elizabeth took the card out of Nanako's outstretched hand, and passed it over to Margaret, who passed it to Theodore, who passed it, in his turn, to Igor. Igor spent a moment staring thoughtfully at the picture of the angel. "This," he said finally, "is the card used to summon the persona called 'Angel,' a persona of the justice arcana. I predict that it will have very interesting results if fused with Icarus, the persona you now carry."

"Fused?" Nanako didn't quite understand what that meant. To fuse something was to attach it to something else, wasn't it? How could you fuse a persona?

"If combined with Angel," continued Igor patiently, "the persona Icarus would develop even greater and more impressive powers, powers that perhaps we have not seen before even inside this Velvet Room. Would you like to try it?"

Behind Nanako, Teddie suddenly shifted uncomfortably. "Wait, Nana-chan," he began.

Nanako didn't hear him in time. "Yes," she told Igor. "Um, yes, I think so. So, what do I have to-?"

Before she had even finished the sentence, Igor raised both of his arms into the air, and, much to Nanako's surprise, the Icarus card flew right out of her pocket to join the Angel card that was now hovering somehow in midair. Oh, she thought, Igor could do magic. That was good to know.

Both cards hung there for a moment, glowing slightly and illuminating the darker corners of the room. Then, unexpectedly, the two cards joined together, and at the same time, Nanako could see the image of Icarus in front of her, standing next to a woman with wings, who looked just like the woman in the picture on the angel card. As Nanako watched, Icarus and the angel woman were standing next to each other, and then, just like that, they weren't, and were instead now standing…inside of each other? Although she knew what she thought she'd seen, that couldn't possibly be right, thought Nanako. Now, instead of Icarus and the angel, there was a beautiful, golden-haired girl sitting on the floor where the two personas had been. The girl was wearing a white dress that looked like it came out of a princess storybook, and there was a soft, sunny glow all around her body, coming out of her hands and her eyes.

"This," murmured Igor, "is Dawn, also of the Justice arcana. Truly remarkable. For the second time, you have amazed us by revealing the nature of a persona that no one in this room has yet had the opportunity to see. I look forward with interest to your future as the Wild Card..."

Nanako was fascinated by the beauty of the woman called "Dawn," but something else was still bothering her. "But," she insisted, "Where's Icarus? Why did he disappear? Where did he go?" She remembered distinctly promising Icarus that everything was going to be okay, and that she would look out for him. What kind of person would she be if she broke that promise and let him just vanish like that?

"Icarus," said Margaret, "and Angel are now one persona, the persona called Dawn. They have come together and changed into something new through their combined powers. Icarus himself, in his original form, is still present within your mind. You may find him there at any time."

That sounded an awful lot like what people always said about Nanako's mother, Chisato. "She's still in your heart," they had told her, when, in her younger years, she hadn't been able not to cry. "If you want your mother, just think about her and she'll be with you again!' That, of course, had never worked. No matter how hard Nanako had tried to think her mother back to life, Chisato had never come. Was this something like that? Had Icarus gone to the same place that Nanako's mother had?

"But I don't want him to change," she insisted, trying to quell the panic that was starting to well up in her heart. "I promised him that I wouldn't let anything hurt him. That means I can't let him turn into someone else. I'm supposed to protect him! Bring him back! I don't want him to die!"

Suddenly, a hand was resting on Nanako's shoulder, and she turned around to find Teddie standing just behind her, looking calmly into her eyes. "I was afraid this might happen," he said sadly. "Nana-chan, Icarus didn't die. He's okay. Personas aren't like people. They can be in more than one place at the same time! It's like…he and Angel made Dawn, and now he's gone back to live inside your head, until you want him to come out again."

Nanako wrinkled her nose in frustration. "So…Dawn is Icarus and Angel's baby?" she asked.

Yosuke sighed. "Not exactly. Hey, Igor, can you bring Icarus out again?"

In moments, Icarus was standing in front of Nanako, sheepishly flexing his wings just as he always was. Nanako grinned with relief, and wrapped her arms under the wings to give him a hug. Icarus just looked at her out of his puzzled, soulful eyes.

Igor handed back Nanako's persona cards, passing them back down the line of assistants until they reached Nanako. When Nanako looked, she found that she now held three cards. She had Icarus, Angel, and now Dawn, who looked in her picture just the way she did in real life.

"Thank you," Nanako told Igor. "Um, I'm sorry I got upset."

"So, what now, Nanako-chan? Are you ready to go back?" Yosuke was clearly hoping she'd say yes, and Nanako felt a twinge of guilt for dragging him around like this. She considered telling him that she'd be just fine if he left her here with Teddie, but realized that saying that would probably only make the situation worse. Yosuke, Nanako knew, had always been one of the most loyal and protective of her Big Bro's friends. Now that Yu wasn't here to protect her, Yosuke was determined to protect them both.

"Let's go back to those doors," she told them. "We can see if there are any more squid there."

"Ah," asked Margaret, rising from her seat. "Have you come to join your friend, then?"

Nanako had no idea what she was talking about. Judging from the looks on Yosuke's and Teddie's faces, neither of them had a clue either.

"Uh, what friend?" asked Yosuke.

Margaret led them through the nightmare door and into the room surrounding the entrances to their injured comrade's minds. There was, as Margaret had indicated, already someone there, lying on the floor outside of the Izanagi door, and looking the worse for wear. As Nanako got closer, she recognized Shinjiro, who was now struggling to get back to his feet, as a trickle of blood ran down and across his leg.

"Shinjiro-san!" exclaimed Yosuke. "Wait, seriously? All by yourself? Are you insane? If four people couldn't beat that thing, then how you were gonna do it without any backup?"

Shinjiro grunted dismissively. "Won't know if I don't try," he muttered. "You guys are taking too long anyway. Minako's suffering because of this…this thing. I can't just wait around and…ugh." It looked to Nanako as though his leg was really hurting him. He laid his hand over the wound on it, grimacing as his fingers touched the injury.

"Oh, here!" Hurrying forward, Teddie summoned his persona and spent a few moments healing Shinjiro, which allowed him to finally get back on to his feet.

"Thanks," he said, looking almost embarrassed.

"How did you escape, anyway?" insisted Yosuke. "Knocked down like that, I would have thought that thing would have killed you."

Shinjiro shrugged. "Looks like the shadow doesn't want to leave that room. Once I'm out here, it doesn't follow me. Should be easier to kill, if it's just standing still like that, but…damn, it's really strong. I still can't even hit it…"

Margaret spoke up. "Shinjiro," she informed them, "has been coming to this room for several days now to attempt to destroy the shadow behind this door. His bravery is commendable, but even I have been forced to remind that one person alone is unlikely to be able to defeat a shadow of this magnitude and power."

Nanako felt a little bit proud of Shinjiro, even though she knew that what Margaret and Yosuke had said was true. Maybe he shouldn't have come alone, and maybe there was no way he could ever have managed to defeat it, but hadn't Dad always said that if you don't succeed, you have to try again and again? That seemed to be what Shinjiro was doing, and she admired that.

"You really love Minako, don't you, Shinjiro-san?" she asked.

Shinjiro just nodded once.

"Okay," said Nanako."Then let's go in and get it, all four of us. We can do it together!"

She was absolutely certain of what she said, but none of the other three looked too convinced.

"Remember, Nanako-chan, we've tried this before," said Yosuke. "Even Rise couldn't find a weakness on that thing. If it doesn't have one, then-!"

Nanako was adamant. "Let me try," she demanded. "Igor says that I have powers too, special powers. I want to make Minako feel better. If she feels better, then so will Shinjiro-san, and so will everybody else."

Yosuke didn't seem to have any reasonable argument to that, although he clearly wished that there was something he could say to refute her. "So, the shadow won't' come out of that room, right?" he asked Shinjiro. "You're sure? If we run away, it won't follow us?"

"Sure," agreed Shinjiro.

"I wonder," muttered Yosuke absently, as he and Shinjiro began to wrench at the now closed door, "how much it hurts to get run over by a wheelchair? Or maybe he'd beat me over the head with it instead…I bet that would do some serious damage."

As soon as the door was open, the horse shadow was there, rearing back on its hind legs and snorting menacingly at them, as though it had been awaiting their entrance. Yosuke immediately fired off a barrage of wind, and Shinjiro chipped away at it with his axe, but, just as the others had insisted, nothing seemed to have any effect. The horse shadow lashed out with physical attacks, but Teddie, devoting himself to his healing spells, was like a whirlwind of comfort, taking every opportunity to assuage an injury.

Nanako had to be honest with herself. At first, she was genuinely a bit frightened. This thing was bigger, stronger, and scarier than the shadows she'd faced and destroyed before, and it was relentlessly working to tear apart her friends. That, of course, was why she had to do something. Even if Teddie was managing to keep things together for the moment, soon they'd either have to run away, or be too hurt to go back.

"Dawn," whispered Nanako, pulling out her newest persona card.

The beautiful girl with the golden hair appeared in front of her, shining and glowing so much that Nanako had to squint to block out the light. Immediately upon Dawn's emergence, the horse shadow looked up, distracted from its assault on Teddie, and for a moment, Nanako met it's yellow, terrifying stare.

"Okay," she murmured, and Dawn's hands shot forward, letting forth a burst of what appeared at first to be sunbeams, which rained down on the horse shadow's head. Even as the sunlight showered on to the shadow, a ring of flames engulfed it at the same time, so that the shadow was almost invisible in the midst of a magical inferno of hot and shining colors. The colors were soon spattered with the red and black as the horse dissolved and disappeared into the air around it.

"Impressive," murmured Margaret, as the door closed of its own accord, perhaps flung shut by the impact of the attack. "An attack that appears to be made of both light and fire skills, and is yet both and neither in the same instant. A new sort of attack, then. My master will be very pleased."

Just as the door was closing, however, Nanako noticed something else, large and dark, lurking in the space behind where the horse shadow had been.

**Chapter Twenty One**

**Author's Note: **My beloved and oh-so-wonderful readers, you seem concerned that I am making it too easy for Nanako to win battles. Trust me, I promise there's a system behind this. If we don't give Nanako a few easy wins at the beginning, it will be much harder to get her to come back for more. She'll make it to the hard battles. In fact, this next shadow, the one she just saw in the back of Minako's mind, is one that she'll never be able to defeat on her own for reasons that will become clear later.

"The beginning?" you ask. "But Ari, this is already chapter twenty one!"

…well, true, but this is going to be a very long story…

Thank you all, as always, for your wonderful comments and questions. It was so relaxing to write these and to chat with some of you today. It really made up for the past few days of torture at work.

**Chapter Twenty One**

At the police station, Dojima had finally been persuaded to take a break, and he'd stepped out for a few minutes to go down the street for a sandwich. Minako was dutifully seated as his desk, standing by in case anyone came through who needed Dojima's immediate attention, or for Minako to take a message for later. So far, no one had needed her for anything, and she'd had far too much time to be alone with her thoughts.

Instead of letting herself wallow in the nightmare that this day had turned itself into, Minako, as usual, made an effort to make herself useful. She cleaned up Dojima's desk to the best of her ability, feeling out the coffee stains with her fingers and wiping them down with a wet cloth. All of the papers she left alone. Even after their unexpected rapport earlier that door, She knew that Dojima wouldn't hesitate to fire her, or worse, if he caught her disarranging what he pretended was a system of documentation.

As Minako was carrying Dojima's oft-used coffee mug from the desk to the sink, she again had to walk past the holding cells, which had been eerily but thankfully quiet for at least an hour now. As she passed by, however, she again heard Tohru call out to her from behind the bars.

"Hey, blind girl," he said. "Where did everybody go? Did you all forget about me or something? Damn, fame does only last for fifteen minutes…"

At first, Minako ignored him. At least, she pretended to ignore him, although every time he spoke to her a little stab of indescribable feeling still shot through her unsteady heart. Junpei had been right, she knew. It would have been so much better if she'd stayed home today, and kept away from Tohru, who she still had trouble thinking about as Adachi, the notorious Inaba murderer. Much as she might hate him for the betrayal that she felt, she was so attuned to enjoying the sound of his voice that when he spoke to her, it was all she could do not to hurry over and listen. Maybe if she'd known him for a long time, or had been very close to him, it would have been easier for her to break away from his thrall. Familiarity, s he knew, could tend to breed contempt. Infatuation like this, however, after only a few days of daydreaming, was very difficult to move past so abruptly.

"Come on," insisted Tohru, in his teasing, cajoling voice. "You don't have to be like that. What can I do? I'm locked up. I'm finished. I can't touch you. You're safe from me. It's boring as hell in here when nobody's trying to break me. At least keep me company for a few minutes."

She hated how glib and unconcerned he seemed about the whole thing. How could he act so normal, when the situation was so dire, for both of them in different ways?

"Leave me alone," she told him firmly.

"Hah!" Tohru sounded triumphant. "See? I got you to answer me after all. You're not very good at this 'cold shoulder' game, are you?"

With a sigh of frustration, Minako turned around, wondering what exactly the repercussions would be she found a way to strike at him through the bars. It would feel good, she knew, to do him some sort of harm or injury, to cause him some sort of pain that she could tangibly feel and recognize.

As it happened, she didn't have to hit him. As soon as she stalked over to the bars, Tohru's voice changed slightly, and she could hear the disappointment behind his jeers as he told her, "Wow, you…you really hate me, huh? Man, you're face just gives everything away…never wanted to see it looking like that, though."

Wishful thinking on her part led Minako to tell him, "Of course I hate you!" even though she knew it wasn't nearly true enough. "You're a cold blooded killer! You hurt my friends and the people they loved! How could anyone not hate you?"

"Yeah," agreed Tohru. "Well, I did warn you. If you'd just trusted me from the beginning then…" He stopped, and laughed a bitter little laugh. "Wow, the irony of that is just beautiful."

There were a lot of things that Minako could have said to that, and she opened her mouth to give him one of them when, suddenly, those thoughts were wiped completely out of her mind. Again, just as it had a few days before, the world suddenly exploded into visual splendor all around her, and she gasped out loud as the room swam into stunning and unexpected view. She was staring through the bars of the cell into Tohru's face, and in the moment before everything went black again she saw him, slumped into a sitting position on the ground, with a pair of handcuffs forcing his wrists together in front of him. For a moment, he looked up and met her eyes, and then the picture was gone, the world was her sightless world again, and Minako found herself desperately disappointed, and again able to breathe.

"Aahh," she whispered, trying to get her bearings back. This wasn't, she reminded herself, the first time that something like this had happened. For all that she didn't know why it happened or what had caused it, there was no point, she knew, in spending too much time to analyze it or to get the sensation back.

At least, that was what she told herself, but her heart and mind both ached for the chance to see just one more tiny moment of the beautiful world all around her. The torture of having that single, tantalizing glimpse made the longing even worse.

"Hey, snap out of it," Tohru was saying, sounding shaken. "What happened? Are you gonna fall over again? I can't catch you this time, so you're on your own."

Minako, however, had no intention of falling over. Slowly, carefully, she listened to the sound of her own breathing, forcing the air in and out as she calmed herself down to the best of her ability. Something about what she'd seen during that moment was dragging at the corners of her mind, trying to get her attention back. Despite his derisive and flippant tone of voice, Minako could still picture how miserable and defeated Tohru had looked behind those bars, and the stark contrast between that vulnerable image, and his recent snide conversation was frankly jarring.

Footsteps accompanied by the sound of rolling wheels against the tile alerted Minako to the arrival of her friends. She heard them run up behind her, and a hand closed over her shoulder as Yosuke announced triumphantly, "We got it! We killed that shadow, like, blam! Dead!"

"Actually, interjected Teddie conscientiously, "It was Nana-chan who really killed it…"

"How do you feel, Minako?" asked Yu.

Minako wasn't sure how to answer that question. She felt…a lot of things, many of which seemed contradictory to one another. One thing she did know, however, was that she did not have a headache.

"I feel good," she told them. "I feel…I feel better. Thank you, all of you. Is anyone hurt?"

"Nah," muttered Shinjiro. "We're fine. Teddie's kinda strange, but he's a good healer."

"Hey!" protested an indignant Teddie. "That hurts me…it really does. How could you be so cruel, Shinjiro-san?"

Shinjiro's arms wrapped around Minako's shoulders and he pulled her against him to kiss the top of her head. "It's over now," he told her. For the first time days, Minako felt absolutely no desire to pull away from him. Instead, she rested her head against his chest for a moment, then turned around and reached up with one hand to pull his face closer to hers.

Was it her imagination, she wondered, or did she hear a strangled little exclamation come from behind the cell bars?

"Hey," mumbled Shinjiro, "Stop it. There are other people around."

"Like they don't know?" asked Minako with a shrug. She went to move away from him, but despite his words, Shinjiro held on to her, keeping her close to him as he shifted around, turning back to face the others.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

Minako knew that she was technically still supposed to be at work, but the driving passion to stay at her desk no matter what happened seemed to have left her all at once. Positive that Dojima would understand her need for a respite, she let Shinjiro and the rest of her friends guide her away from the cells and over towards the station entrance, chatting quietly to each other all the time.

"I still haven't figured out how I'm going to punish you for leaving me at the food court like that," Yu announced casually.

"Oh, man…" Yosuke swallowed audibly. "I said I was sorry, okay? Please don't hit me over the head with a chair…"

"Huh?" Teddie sounded confused. "Doesn't that sound more like something that Kanji would do?

Nanako, Minako realized, was probably with them, judging from the tip tap of smaller footsteps that she could hear walking alongside her. "Nanako?" she asked. "You're very quiet. Are you all right? You didn't get hurt inside the Velvet Room, did you?" Minako found that she couldn't bear the idea of the brave little girl getting injured on her account.

"No," Nanako assured her, "I'm fine." For all of that, thought Minako, she certainly didn't sound fine. Maybe Nanako was just exhausted after her ordeal with the shadows. After all, she was a much smaller person, and fighting with personas was a physically and mentally taxing experience.

"Thank you," said Minako , reaching out to touch the top of Nanako's head. "Thank you for defending me and for protecting Shinji. You're a brave person and a very good friend."

She had, of course, hoped that those words would cheer Nanako up, but judging by the girl's sad little sigh, it seemed that Minako had only managed to make matters worse. What on earth, she wondered, had gotten Nanako so down?

After a few pleasant goodbyes and several more expressions of heartfelt gratitude, Minako and Shinjiro left their friends behind and headed for home. Shinjiro made dinner, and they sat down to the table together in a semblance of refreshing harmony that was an amazing source of relief to Minako.

"You're not going to give me a hard time for coming to pick you up from work?" Shinjiro asked, as they ate. "Or for going into the Velvet Room without telling you first?"

"No, why would I?" asked Minako. "You did me a favor, a huge favor. I…I guess 'I appreciate it' isn't enough, huh?"

Shinjiro laughed. "Nah, it's plenty," he assured her. "You just…you seem different. Less tense. For a few days, I was starting to think that…" He stopped, and then apparently changed his mind. "Never mind," he insisted. "I'm just glad you're feeling better. It's nice to see you smiling like that."

He reached out across the table and closed her hand in his larger one, sending two different feelings shooting down Minako's spine. On one hand, it had been so long since she'd allowed them to really be alone together that her mind had already begun to go slightly inappropriate places the moment she felt his touch. On the other hand, she was all too aware that she'd spent the past few days fantasizing actively about another man. Sitting here, now, with Shinjiro, having just been rescued by him from psychological torment, she realized that she probably couldn't go on keeping that fact a secret any longer. If she didn't tell him soon, the guilt would only get worse, and neither of them would ever be able to forgive her for the breach.

She took a deep, calming breath. "Shinji," she began, "there's…there's something that I have to tell you. You're not going to like it, but…"

Shinji squeezed her hand. "Forget it," he said. "If I'm not going to like it, then don't tell me."

"But," protested Minako, "I have to-!"

Abruptly, Shinjiro leaned across the table and kissed her, something that he rarely did in the middle of something so sacred as a the last meal of the day. "I said forget it," he insisted, a little more firmly. "I can guess. Look, you weren't responsible for what happened while those shadows were controlling you, okay?"

No, Minako thought, that isn't true. I may not have been fully in control, but what happened because of the shadows is really what I wanted to happen, isn't it? Minako couldn't help but feel as though she was just as guilty as anyone else of committing a transgression, perhaps even more so because, even after she'd been aware of the influence of the shadows, she had still been guilty of the feelings that had spurred on the action in the first place. Even now, even knowing that her friends had gotten rid of the shadow and freed up that space in her mind, Minako had trouble thinking about Tohru. She didn't want to think too hard about him, only to realize that the feelings hadn't actually changed.

"Shinji, please," she began. "I want to tell you."

"Let it go," insisted Shinjiro. "Let's just…finish dinner."

They ate for a few minutes in slightly strained silence. Minako had to admit to herself that at least trying to tell Shinjiro the truth did make her feel a little bit better about the situation. If he was too afraid that hearing the words out loud would hurt him, at least she couldn't blame herself for knowingly keeping secrets.

"All right," she agreed, sighing around the bite of food that she was forking into her mouth.

**Chapter Twenty Two**

**Author's Note: **Hello again! I just wanted to give you all a head's up that we are about to face a couple of brain-eating shadows that are a little different from the last one. Minako is going to be dealing with a, um, slightly more adult shadow. Do you all remember that infamous moment in Persona 3, the one where you're in the hotel room? Yeah, think of that kind of shadow. That part of the story will, of course, also lead into the long-anticipated double date with Junpei, Rise, Minako and Shinjiro…

Anyway, I wanted to warn you that things are going to get a little racy in here, and with that in mind, I have, for absolutely no reason, created a poll. You can find it on my profile page. The poll asks the question "which of Minako's love interest are you the most interested in?" Honestly, I was just curious, so if you get bored, go ahead over to my profile and check it out. Thanks!

Also, I've been doing some re-planning and re-plotting of this story, based on a wonderful suggestion by **Meia42.** Since this story is getting insanely long, we are definitely going to turn it into two stories. More details on that are pending!

Thanks for your patience, and for helping me have so much fun!

**Chapter Twenty Two**

Minako awoke the next morning, and found that she had a headache after all. That worried her for a moment, but the headache was so slight, and unnoticeable that she was sure, after a few minutes, that maybe she had just been grinding her teeth in her sleep or something like that. Headaches, she told herself, were not always caused by shadows. Sometimes, they were caused by overeating, which she'd definitely done last night, or by stress, which the events of the day before had left her under. Sometimes, they were even caused by sleeping the wrong way on the bed, or resting her head against a lump in the pillow. There was no reason, she thought, to spend any time worrying about it.

Shinjiro was still asleep in the bed next to her, and Minako rolled over to curl up against his side. She felt him shift against her, and his hand came around to cradle her waist.

"Mmmgble," said Shinjiro, apparently still incoherent and semi-conscious. Minako giggled, grabbed his hand, and kissed two of his fingers before sliding up on top of him and giving him a fluttery, teasing kiss on his slightly parted lips.

That woke him up pretty fast. "Heh," he muttered, "Good morning to you, too."

"Good morning," whispered Minako. Snuggling her body closer to his, she reached up and wrapped both arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his forehead, to his nose, then to his cheek, and running a line of little kisses all the way along his face to his lips. When she eventually got to his mouth, Shinjiro wouldn't let her go for a moment, kissing her deeply, with his morning face scratchy and unshaven against hers.

"Don't you have to get to work?" he asked, after finally and reluctantly breaking away.

Minako shrugged. "Yes," she agreed, "but…not quite. I have a little time."

"Are you sure?" Shinjiro insisted. "You've been going in early for the past few days. Doesn't Dojima-san need you for something?"

"I doubt it," said Minako. "Besides, I put in an extra day on Saturday, didn't I? So I should have some wiggle room."

Shinjiro's arms pressed around Minako, and his lips against her ear murmured, "Hey, that's fine by me, but….just remember, this was your idea."

**Meanwhile, at the Dojima residence…**

Nanako was annoyed, and she was also frustrated that she was annoyed. It was already eight o'clock, and Yu hadn't come down for breakfast yet. That, of course, as she well knew, was totally normal for someone on summer vacation from school. There was no reason why he had to get up for breakfast at the same time that she did, and Dad always said that sometimes, sleeping in could be healthy for a growing child. Nanako wasn't entirely sure that Yu could be considered a child, but if it was healthy for her, then it must be healthy for him, too.

Still, this morning, Nanako had bounced out of bed, eager to finally have the chance to talk to her Big Bro about what she'd seen inside Minako's mind. It didn't seem to her as though anyone else had seen that other dark, lurking thing behind where the horse shadow was, and Nanako had tried so hard to convince herself that she'd imagined it, but…in the end, she was still worried. She was still very worried. What if there was still something there, getting ready to hurt Minako? She felt terrible, knowing that everyone was celebrating while something could still be very wrong. For some reason, she just hadn't had the courage to speak up and mention it, especially in the face of Shinjiro and Yosuke's relief and delight that they'd finally saved Minako, and solved all of her problems. She didn't want to disappoint them or let them down, and so she'd said nothing, and now it was all that she could manage to think about.

Dad came out of his bedroom, already dressed and ready to go to work. He stopped on his way to the kitchen to give Nanako a quick kiss on the top of her head, before gathering up the things that would serve as breakfast, and moving towards the door.

"Dad?" asked Nanako suddenly. "Um…exactly how much sleep is healthy for a growing person?"

Dad looked surprised for a moment, before he glanced around the room, and realization dawned. "Oh, he's not up yet? Good. Don't bother him, Nanako, he needs his rest. Everything lately has been so hectic…I wouldn't mind having the chance to sleep a little bit myself."

After Dad had left, Nanako did her best to do as he'd asked her. She turned on the television, read a book, cleaned up the kitchen, and even called up a few of her friends, all of whom seemed to be busy today. Eventually, despite all of her best efforts, Nanako found herself standing outside the door to Yu's room. She couldn't handle it anymore. She had to talk to someone about this, and he was the only person who could really help her figure out how to tell the others about it.

"Um, Big Bro?" she called, knocking hesitantly on the door. There was no answer. Something strange and eerily familiar about this situation sent an unpleasant, sick feeling down Nanako's back, and she knocked again, this time much louder. "Big Bro? Are you awake?"

To Nanako's intense relief, that time, she heard his voice. "Yes, I'm awake…what's wrong, Nanako?"

"Oh, Big Bro…um…I was just wondering if maybe you wanted some breakfast. Aren't you hungry?" She realized that this was a lame way to start a conversation, but, honestly, he probably was getting hungry up here all be himself. She knew that she was, at least.

"No thank you," said Yu. "You can go ahead and eat without me."

Nanako sighed. "Please," she begged him, dropping the pretenses. "I really have to talk to you about something…something pretty bad. Can I come in? Just for a few minutes?"

She honestly wasn't expecting him to say no. As far as she could remember, he had never said 'no' to her before when she'd asked him for something really important. It was a shock, therefore, when she heard Yu's answer.

"I'm sorry, Nanako," he told her. "I don't think that I feel much like getting out of bed today. I have a terrible headache. We'll have to talk another time."

Nanako just stared at the door. "A…headache?" she asked. "Can I get you some medicine?"

"I'd like to be left alone today," said Yu, and she heard the covers rustle as he turned over in his bed. "I'll play with you again tomorrow."

Walking slowly away from the door, Nanako tried not to be hurt by her cousin's refusal. After all, he was much older than her, and probably wanted some time to himself, just like all adults sometimes did. Still, he'd never rejected her before, not quite like that, in that very abrupt, disinterested sort of way. Was he really going to stay in bed all day? Who did that? Even sick people occasionally had someone bring them food, or had to get up to go to the bathroom.

Nanako walked down the stairs, and picked up the telephone. After dialing a few numbers, she listened for the voice on the other end, and asked, "Yosuke? Um…is it okay for you to talk right now? I'm worried about Big Bro…"

**A few hours later, at the police station…**

Minako hummed along to herself as she made her third trip of the day to the coffee maker. The headache that had begun that morning had completely worn away, and she felt really, truly good and healthy for the first time in at least a week. It was true that she hadn't managed to talk things through with Shinjiro the night before, but if this morning had been any indication, they would, of course, find a way to sort things out eventually. There was nothing in the world, she decided, that she really had to worry about right now.

"You're awfully perky today," came Tohru's voice from the vicinity of the cells. "Did something good happen? Want to share?"

Damn, thought Minako, stopping in her tracks. She had so hoped that after last night and this morning, she wouldn't even flinch when Tohru spoke to her. She honestly had spent most of the morning not even realizing that he was there, until, just now, his voice had reminded her of the brief glimpse of him that she'd gotten the day before. All of those unwelcome, conflicted feelings came seeping back into her mind, and she cursed both herself and him for ruining what really had been turning into a perfectly good day.

"No," she told him, in no uncertain terms. "I don't want to share."

Minako continued along to the coffee maker, and finished making a cup for Dojima. As she crossed back in front of the cell doors, however, Tohru tried again.

"So that was your boyfriend yesterday, right? He's…really tall. I mean. Like a tree. Is that your type? Big, hulking, manly guys like that?"

I am not, Minako told herself, having this conversation. She maintained a stony silence as she turned away from the cells to go over to Dojima's desk.

Tohru's next words, however, were ones that she couldn't possibly ignore. "Or maybe you don't have a type," he sneered. "Maybe you're just like so many other women, just taking whatever you can get your hands on, no matter who it hurts, huh?"

Minako paused. Placing the coffee carefully down on her own desk, she turned around and took three quick, angry strides back towards the cells. "Excuse me?" she asked.

"Wipe that injured dignity off your face, huh?" continued Tohru. "I mean, you're the one who did it, not me. You've got this boyfriend that you're living with. You drape yourself all over him in public, like last night, but…a few days ago, you were coming on to me. What does that look like?"

"I cannot believe," managed Minako slowly, "that you, a self-confessed serial killer, of all people, are trying to lecture me on my conduct."

Tohru made a dismissive little sound in his throat. "Then how come you look so guilty about it?" he asked "Honestly, I was starting to think that maybe you were different, that maybe you weren't like all the other women, but…then, last night, I saw the way you acted with him, and I realized. There's nothing special about you. You were willing to betray him without batting an eye, just like the rest of them."

"I do not care," insisted Minako, her temper rising hotly in her chest, "if you think that I'm special or not, and I did not betray him! I don't know what happened at the riverbank, it was…it was an accident, I wasn't thinking about it. Once I realized what was going on, I tried to stop you, remember? I made a mistake, it wasn't something I-!"

"Oh, so it was all my fault, right?" Tohru asked her. "You never came on to me at all; you didn't want anything to do with it."

"I did want to!" shouted Minako. "I still want-!"

She stopped, and a cold bead of sweat swam down her spine as she realized what he'd gotten her to say. That, she knew, had been a terrible mistake. Now it was out there, in the open, and there was no way that she could take it back.

A moment of uncomfortable silence elapsed before either of them spoke again. Minako stood there, rooted to the spot, hoping beyond her wildest ability to hope that Dojima had not overheard the words that she had just said. She wished that she could make Tohru not have heard them either, but that, unfortunately, was out of the question.

She expected Tohru to mock her, to laugh at her, and part of her new that at this moment, she may have deserved it. Instead, when he spoke again, he sounded surprised, and slightly hesitant.

"Why would you say something like that?" he asked. "Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you aren't like the others after all."

Minako turned on her heel and stalked back to her desk, fuming at both Tohru and her own inability to keep control of her temper. Her good mood had vanished, and she delivered the coffee to Dojima's desk before sitting down again at her own, and taking a few deep, calming breaths to try and find those positive feelings again.

She almost didn't hear it when the phone began to ring, and barely picked it up in time. "Hello?" she answered. "This is the Inaba Police Department."

"Hey, Minako?" asked Yosuke's harried voice on the other end of the line. "Can you get away right now? I think we have to have a meeting."

**Chapter Twenty Three**

**Author's Note: **So, a few weeks ago, I revealed to my boyfriend of five years (he goes by "Dagget" online) that I had, perhaps, maybe, written a fanfiction story or two. He responded by buying me a Nanako keychain and expressing his lack of concern.

Well, recently we decided that he's going to move in with me this summer. Under those circumstances, I felt that it was necessary to divulge the full truth.

"Dag," I told him today, "I did not just write one fanfiction. I did not just write two. I have written…over 100,000 words of fanfiction in the last two months. I may have an addiction. Do you still love me?"

He responded by saying, "I just spent the last two hours trying to figure out if there was a way to create a game of Risk in the land of Oz. You couldn't out-nerd me if you tried, Ari."

…What is "Risk?"

I think we are going to survive this.

In other, and more relevant news, I owe a very big thank you to **Meia42**, for taking the time to talk with me and to help me sort out my future plans for this story. This story is quickly drawing to a nasty little cliffhanger ending, and I'll soon be ready to announce the next direction in which this series will be going. Actually, thanks to everyone who is willing to talk to me about my stories. It's such a treat and I know you are all busy people.

And now, a chapter.

**Chapter Twenty Three**

"Is everybody here?" asked Yosuke, hanging up his phone and staring back into the many pairs of eyes around the table in the food court.

"Is Minako coming?" asked Yukiko.

Yosuke shook his head. "She's alone at the desk, she can't leave. I told her to get over here as soon as she can, though."

"Why?" Kanji shrugged. "It's not like there's much she can do to help, right? Not with her being all blind and stuff."As so often happened, multiple pairs of feminine eyes glared daggers in Kanji's direction. He blinked. "What? What'd I say this time?"

"Thoughtless comments like that," Naoto informed him, "are probably exactly the reason that Minako has been placed under so much stress lately."

"Yeah," agreed Kanji sarcastically. "Yeah, that, and also the shadows that are eating her brain. Seriously? How is this my fault?"

Yosuke noticed that, when Naoto mentioned Minako being "under a lot of stress," Rise, Yukiko and Chie all shared a significant look. He had absolutely no idea what that meant, but it was obvious that, as usual, they knew something about the situation that he didn't. Girls always seemed to know things. He decided to let it go.

"Anyway," he continued, interrupting Kanji and Naoto's argument before it could escalate into anything worse, "We can't wait for her. There wasn't anything in there the last time that we checked, but…we can't take any risks. If Yu's acting weird, then we have to check it out, and we don't want to wait for it to get as bad as it did with Minako."

Rise, Yukiko, and Chie glanced over at Shinjiro, then at each other, and then began whispering amongst themselves. Shinjiro, who was brooding in a corner with Junpei, apparently didn't notice. What the hell, wondered Yosuke, was going on?

"In that case," asked Naoto, "Shall we discuss who will go? Surely having all of us parade into the Velvet Room, purely on a mission of reconnaissance would be slightly excessive. Nanako, as the wild card, will have to go, of course, and you, Yosuke, should probably chaperone her."

"I don't need a 'chaperone,'" muttered Nanako, although her usual spirit wasn't in it. She was slumped over in a chair next to Teddie, fidgeting with the skirt of her jumper and biting her lip. Worrying about her cousin, Yosuke knew, was keeping her too preoccupied to be worried about much else, at the moment.

"Oooh, pick Teddie!" Teddie's hand shot up into the air, and he waved it around enthusiastically. "Nana-chan, I'll be your knight in shining armor!"

"I, too, should like to see this new power of yours that Yosuke told us about," murmured Naoto. "That is, if it is all right with you, Nanako-chan."

Yosuke glanced around the food court, and saw no objections. "Okay, then," he announced. "It's settled. Me, Nanako, Teddie, and Naoto will go this time. Rise, you come too. If we find anything really big in there, we'll come back and rework our battle strategy. Everybody, be on standby, okay? Hopefully this won't get ugly, but, if it does…"

Nanako, however, was already up and running towards the electronics department. Before Yosuke had a chance to finish his sentence, Teddie got up to follow her. Glancing apologetically at him, Naoto shrugged, stood up as gracefully as she always did, and joined the other two.

Yosuke sighed. He had to hand it to Yu. Being a leader was definitely not as easy as he had once made it look.

As always, the team made its way into the store, through the television, and eventually towards the Velvet Room. Igor and his three assistants were waiting for them, as usual, but this time something was very wrong. Instead of sitting serenely in their assigned chairs, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Theodore were all kneeling in various places around the floor, each of them leaning intently over what looked from where Yosuke was standing like a large pad of paper. The walls of the Velvet Room, usually so artistically and elegantly bare, were now covered with pristinely colorful images that seemed to have been neatly torn from the pages of a book.

"Oh!" said Nanako, smiling for the first time since she'd called Yosuke about Yu's strange behavior. "You're using the coloring books! Do you like them?"

Yosuke blinked. What coloring books? He didn't remember anything about coloring books. Still, now that he knew what to look for, he realized that the pads of paper in each of the assistants' hands were, indeed, coloring books with big beautiful images of nature scenes and butterflies.

"These are fascinating artistic tools," murmured Theodore, still too intent on his coloring to look up at the newcomers. "They foster a collaborative expression between two people; one a line artist, the other a color artist. Truly remarkable."

"Yeah," agreed Nanako, "they're pretty. I got a lot of them for Christmas last year, but I don't like to use coloring books. I draw all my own pictures! I'm really glad you're having fun with them."

Yosuke's head spun. Something about this image was just plain weird.

With a polite but commanding little cough, Igor marshaled his assistants to attention, and they all, in perfectly disturbing unison, closed their books, stood up, and regained their seats.

"Welcome to the Velvet Room," murmured Elizabeth. "How can we help you today?"

"I want to see my Big Bro's room," said Nanako, without a moment's hesitation. "I think something's wrong. There might be another squid. We have to check."

The attendants all nodded at each other, and apparently reached an agreement, because a moment later Margaret stood up and gestured the team to accompany her through the nightmare door. As he passed through the door, Yosuke could see out of the corner of his eye that Theodore and Elizabeth were reaching again for their coloring books, and beginning to retake their places on the floor.

"Coloring books?" asked Yosuke. "Seriously?"

Nanako was unperturbed. "They looked bored," she explained. "So, I helped!"

As it turned out, the nightmare room was empty, and the paths to the Izanagi and Izanagi-No-Okami doors were totally clear. Yosuke had almost allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief, before Rise, having already summoned Kouzeon, interrupted him.

"There's something there," she told the team. "Behind Yu's door. It's…" frowning, she paused uncertainly. "I'm sure it's something, but…it doesn't feel as though it's hostile to us. It's not very big or very strong, either, and it has a ton of weaknesses. This…should be easy?." Despite her words, Rise sounded doubtful and confused.

"But," insisted Yosuke, "it's definitely a shadow, right?"

Rise nodded. "I'm pretty sure. I mean, I don't know what else it could be. Just be careful, okay? Something doesn't feel right."

Teddie just shrugged, and then swaggered with exaggerated nonchalance right up to the door. "There's nothing to worry about, Rise-chan," he assured her glibly. "We've got Nanako with us now! She has powers even Igor's never seen before! This will be a piece of cake for super Nana-chan."

"Um," objected Nanako quietly. "Teddie, that's-!"

Teddie, however, had already pulled the door open. Yosuke felt himself tense, expecting to see some horrible, lurking, looming creature waiting just beyond the threshold. Instead, for a moment, it looked as though the room was empty after all.

"Hey, Rise," he began. "I thought you said that-!"

"Ooh! Look!" Nanako pointed at a dark spot in the corner of the room. "Look! It's a bunny! That's a bunny, isn't it?"

Yosuke peered hard at the spot where Nanako was pointing, and soon realized that, yes, there was the shadow of a rabbit, so small and bleakly colored that it blended into the shades and patterns of the darkness behind it. For all of its innocent shape, however, the rabbit had glowing yellow eyes, shadow eyes that made Yosuke reach instinctively into his pocket for his persona card.

"No!" insisted Nanako. "It doesn't look like it wants to hurt us. You don't need to attack it."

Frowning, Naoto shook her head at Nanako. "A rabbit," she murmured reflectively. "The symbol of fear and skittish uncertainty. With something like that couched inside his mind, even our own fearless Yu Narukami would find his harrowing life difficult to face. We can't allow it to remain here, even it does, apparently mean us no harm."

"But," mumbled Nanako helplessly, "It's so cute…"

Yosuke had to admit to himself that he couldn't think of the rabbit as "cute." The idea of a shadow being "cute" was something that, even now, he had trouble wrapping his mind around. Sure, Teddie was technically a shadow, and there were times, maybe, when Teddie might almost be considered "cute," but Yosuke could never really lump Teddie in with all the other shadows he had faced. Teddie was more human now than some of the people Yosuke knew who had been born human to begin with. At least, he had all the most annoying qualities of a real live human being.

"Sorry, Nanako," he muttered. Summoning Takahaya Susano-o, he leveled a blast of wind at the shadow that should have swept it instantly off of its feet. Instead, and not entirely unexpectedly, the shadow rabbit simply dodged nimbly to one side, and then continued to stare up at Yosuke out of its hunted yellow eyes.

"Wow," said Teddie. "It's fast! I bet Nao-chan can get it, though! She's the fastest draw in the East!"

Dutifully, Naoto drew her gun and fired a series of quick, precise rounds at the rabbit. Apparently without much effort, the rabbit ducked, dodged, and leapt over every bullet.

The next few moments were spent in a blur of frustrating, rejected assaults on the shadow rabbit. Naoto, who even Yosuke had to admit was probably one of the strongest and most combat-savvy members of the team seemed unable to strike the shadow rabbit with a single one of her many magnificent attacks. Yosuke attempted to silence the shadow, and then stop it in its tracks, but was unable to find a single item or spell that the rabbit could not easily avoid.

"Okay," panted Yosuke finally, "How about this. If it's dodging all of our attacks, then we have to cut it off so that it has nowhere to run, right? Let's all attack it at once, only from different sides. Naoto, you go left, and Teddie, you go right. I'll come around from the back, and that leaves Nanako to go at it head on."

"Very clever," murmured Naoto approvingly.

"Ooh, yeah, good idea," agreed Teddie.

Nanako, on the other hand, said nothing at all. She was busy staring at the shadow rabbit, with a very confused and frustrated look on her face.

"Nanako-chan?" asked Yosuke. "Hey, are you okay? Did you hear what I said?"

"Uh huh," said Nanako slowly. "Yeah, but…but…I don't want to."

Yosuke stared at her. "You don't want to what?" he asked.

"I don't want to hurt it." Nanako was still biting her lip, but she had that same, fierce, defiant look on her face that Yosuke had begun to recognize as a combination of her inner spirit, and Minako's recent influence. "It's not going to hurt us, see? The bunny's scared; it just wants to run away."

"If we don't kill it," insisted Yosuke slowly, doing his best not to let his impatience show, "then your Big Bro is going to start having really bad headaches all the time, just like Minako did. Then he might have start having bad thoughts, and doing some really, really bad things. You understand that, right?"

"No," muttered Nanako. "I don't understand. Theodore said that all of the bad things that people do are things that they really wanted to do. Even if there are shadows inside, people do the same things that they wanted to do anyway. Big Bro doesn't want to do anything bad things. He's a good person, I know he is! So I think you're wrong. Maybe the shadows won't hurt him. Maybe if we leave this one alone, it will run away."

Yosuke took a deep breath. He glanced over Naoto, who couldn't seem to decide if she wanted to look alarmed or impressed by Nanako's reasoning. Teddie walked over and gave Nanako's hand a comforting little squeeze.

"Let's just get it over with," he told her. "For Sensei, okay?"

Nanako glared up at him. "No," she said stubbornly. "It's wrong. I can't."

Yosuke was at a complete loss. How was he supposed to explain to his partner's little cousin that, sometimes, killing was okay?

**Chapter Twenty Four**

**Author's Note: **The last segment that I wrote ended up expanding into two chapters, because I wrote too much for just one, so TA-DA! Surprise double update!

As we continue to build towards the dramatic finale, I figure we need a couple of moments of relaxation in the midst of what is about to erupt into chaos. Many of you who answered my poll are going to love what happens at the end of this chapter… Thanks for reading!

**Chapter Twenty Four**

A soon as Dojima came back from lunch, Minako begged him for an hour off. At first, she planned to call Yosuke and to join him at the food court, but he didn't pick up when she called, and Minako could only assume that he was already inside the Velvet Room. Even if she did head over to join him, she knew, there probably wasn't a great deal that she'd be able to do, other than sit around and wait for him and the other members of his team to come and give her the good news.

Instead of going to the food court, therefore, Minako took the bus over to the Dojima residence. There was nobody home when she knocked, and she ended up having to use the key that Dojima had given her the day that he'd somehow managed to forget his badge on the kitchen counter. He'd never remembered to take the key back, and although she'd been meaning to return it to him, she was glad that she had it now.

"Yu?" she called, making her way up towards his bedroom. "Hey, Yu? It's Minako. Yosuke called me. He's worried about you. Nanako-chan's worried, too. Actually, we're all worried."

"I'm fine," muttered Yu. "It's nothing."

"Yeah? Well, okay. That's good to know." Minako leaned herself up against the bedroom door. "Can I come in? Maybe we can talk about what's bothering you."

"It's complicated," Yu informed her. "You wouldn't get it."

"Really?" persisted Minako. "Are you sure? Because, honestly, I think I might."

There was a long pause, and then, to Minako's relief, she thought she heard Yu laugh.

"Maybe you would," he admitted. "Okay. Yeah, you can come in. I mean, I'm in bed, but-!"

"And I'm blind," Minako reminded him, pushing open the door. "You don't have to get up and get dressed on my account."

She had been in Yu's room once before, at the beginning, when he'd first been getting used to life in the chair. Minako, Junpei, and Shinjiro had all worked together to help propel the chair up the stairs into his room, before Dojima had decided to have the ramp installed. She hadn't seen it then, and she didn't see it now, so honestly she couldn't have said whether or not he was a clean person, a messy person, or even the sort of person who hung pictures of naked porn stars all over his bedroom walls. Although she'd never been into Yosuke's room, Minako knew from talking to Teddie that Yosuke, at least, was the kind of guy who had porn under the bed.

"I'm sorry I'm making everyone worry," mumbled Yu. "I'm supposed to be this great leader, and here I am lying around and feeling sorry for myself. Some leader, huh?"

Sidestepping the question, Minako asked him, "how's your head?"

Yu sighed. "it hurts," he admitted. "A lot."

Locating the bed frame with her foot, Minako sat down on the edge of it. "Well," she said conversationally, "then it's probably the shadows messing with your head, so nobody can get mad at you for making us worry, or for moping around in your room. You get a free pass. See? All fixed."

Again, Yu laughed. "Yeah," he replied, "but you didn't lie around and feel sorry for yourself when the shadows attacked you. You were out there trying to get back into the Velvet Room, and to find a way to start fighting again. I admire that about you. You didn't let the shadows win."

"I started a make-out session with a convicted murderer," retorted Minako bluntly. She hadn't intended to tell him, or planned to tell him, but somehow, Minako realized, she didn't mind Yu knowing about it. If anyone wasn't going to judge her for it, then it was probably him. "I had trouble with the shadows, too. Just a different kind of trouble."

"You…with Adachi?" Yu sounded slightly stunned. "Did he hurt you?"

Minako shrugged. "No," she said. "I think he wanted to, though."

Yu seemed to need a moment to mull over that one. "But he didn't, in the end," he murmured finally, apparently more to himself than to Minako. "That's good. Sometimes I sit around and wonder what my life would have been like if Izanami had never gotten involved. I bet he does the same thing, a lot. We have…a lot in common, he and I. We're the same."

Minako remembered Tohru saying something very similar to her that first night that she'd gone with him to the river. "But you aren't," she insisted. "You used your power to make wonderful friends, to overcome things, to save the world! He started killing anyone he felt like, just because he could. How can you say that the two of you are the same? You couldn't be more different!"

"I think," said Yu thoughtfully, "that the only difference is that I used my power, and his power used him. Does that make sense? He couldn't control it, and it overwhelmed him. It was too much for him to handle all at once, and something inside of him broke. He couldn't face the darker parts of himself, and so he became them. I just…"

"You just managed to be the stronger person," interrupted Minako. "You just had more strength of character, more resolve. You overcame things that he couldn't, and for that, your friends love you, and are proud of you. His weakness has nothing to do with you. You're nothing like him. He's a coward."

"So am I," murmured Yu. "I'm afraid of what I could become. I'm afraid of what Theodore told us, about those persona users who have never faced themselves being too weak or too incapable to handle their own minds. I'm afraid that might happen to me someday."

Minako thought back to that night, when she, Yosuke, Nanako, and Yu had all gone in together to the TV, to talk with Theodore about the real consequences of having shadows inside their minds. At the time, she'd been far more focused on the idea that the shadows only exacerbated the wishes that people already had, but now that she thought about it, she did remember him saying something about persona users, like Yu, who hadn't awakened properly to their own powers. Yu had been pretty upset about it, too, at the time. He'd asked a lot of questions that had surprised Yosuke and Nanako. How had she managed to forget? Not for the first time, Minako cursed herself for being too self centered to see this coming. Of course he was frightened. Who wouldn't be? If it had been her in Yu's shoes, she'd be terrified too.

"Aah!" exclaimed Yu, and Minako felt him slump forward against her.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "What's happening? Is it your head?"

Apparently unable to say anything through the pain, Yu nodded. Minako shifted around to let him rest his head more comfortably against her shoulder. "I don't think you have to worry," she told him. "You're a better person than you give yourself credit for. The shadows aren't messing with you because you're too weak. They're inside your head because you and I made a choice." Reflecting on that for a moment, she frowned, and corrected herself. "Well, no, that's not fair. You never made a choice. Yosuke and I made it for you. It wasn't…it shouldn't have been you in the first place."

"We agreed," managed Yu, around pain and gritted teeth, "not to look back. I'm not…sorry."

Minako, a little bit relieved to hear him say that, smiled. "See?" she said. "I wasn't wrong. You are a good person after all. Most people would resent it. I mean…even I resent it, a little."

From the floor below, Minako could suddenly hear movement and the faint echo of voices. The others, she thought, must be back from the Velvet Room. Judging by the fact that Yu's headache seemed to be getting worse, the news couldn't be good.

"We're up here!" she called, as loudly as she could manage without deafening the man whose face was pressed against her shoulder.

Two sets of hurried footsteps made their way up the ramp, and the door came creaking open. "Whoa," said Yosuke. "Um, Minako? What are you doing here? I mean, you're sort of…in Yu's bed with him right now."

"Crap, Yosuke," mumbled Yu. "This is not what it looks like…"

Minako did her best to glare in Yosuke's direction. Why should he care where she was or wasn't? Besides, it didn't "look like" anything. It wasn't as though she and Yu didn't have their clothes on.

"We need some painkillers," she said pointedly.

"Oh! Okay! I'll be right back!" said Nanako, and Minako heard the girl's footsteps heading back down towards the kitchen.

"What did you find in the Velvet Room?" Minako asked. "Was there a shadow?"

Yosuke paused for a moment. "Yeah," he said finally. "There was. It's just….uh…well, it's not exactly what you think."

Minako listened as Yosuke described the events that had taken place in the Velvet Room. When he mentioned Naoto's interpretation of the rabbit shadow as representing fear, she felt Yu shift uncomfortably on the bed next to her.

"So, I guess what we need to do," he finished, "is to leave Nanako behind next time, and bring one of the other guys. Then maybe we can head it off from four sides and get rid of it."

"But," asked Minako, "what if that doesn't work? If you can't catch it by trapping it, and you can't find any attacks that it won't dodge, how are you going to kill it?"

Yosuke sighed. "I…have no idea," he admitted. "We'll handle that when we get to it, okay?"

Nanako, who had returned with the painkillers while Yosuke was talking, spoke up for the first time. "Sorry, Big Bro," she muttered sadly. "I guess I'm not very good at helping after all."

"No, Nanako," said Yu, "you're not wrong. It's not right to take the life of something else for no reason. You did the right thing."

"But, your headache…" began Nanako.

Minako could tell that she and Yosuke weren't needed her anymore. By unspoken agreement, the two of them left the room and headed back down into the kitchen.

"Hey, um," said Yosuke, as Minako put on her jacket. "You never answered my question. Why were you and Yu in bed together?"

"Because," sighed Minako, "I wanted to talk to him, and he was in bed when I got here, so I went up to his room and convinced him to let me in. I wanted to know what was bothering him. The rest of you were off fighting the shadows, so I figured that he could use someone to talk to, maybe someone who's been through something similar."

Yosuke seemed satisfied with that. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Right. That makes sense." After a moment's hesitation he added, somewhat irrelevantly, "Did you know that Rise has a thing for Junpei?"

Minako stopped. Very carefully, trying not to give herself away, she murmured, "I…had no idea. Why do you say that?"

"Because," continued Yosuke, "she told me that she's gonna ask him to get dinner with her tonight. You know, to blow off steam after the Velvet Room? Anyway, she said that she was going to ask you and Shinjiro-san to go along, to make it a double date, so I figured maybe you knew already."

Oh, thought Minako, with a slight pang of guilt for forgetting all about Rise's request. "Unfortunately," she said, "Shinji's working tonight. He picked up a job as the night guard at the police station and with Adachi in lock-up, they're being extra careful now. I don't think he'll be able to go."

"Aw, man. Rise's gonna be really disappointed," said Yosuke. "She was dead set on having this be a double. She kept going on about how a double date made it more casual and low key, which would make more sense after a day in the Velvet Room…I mean, she's really thought this through. It's kind of creepy. Is that what girls usually do, when it comes to dating?"

Yes, thought Minako. "I don't really know," she said instead. "Honestly, I know what it looks like, but I never did too much dating. I was, you know, dead for three years."

"Uh, right." Yosuke sounded suddenly awkward. "Yeah, I forgot about that."

Minako was disappointed that Rise had chosen this particular night for her date. Honestly, when she really thought about it, she knew that Junpei could probably use a little bit attention, something he really hadn't gotten from a woman since Chidori's car accident. He deserved to know that there were women out there who might be interested in him, and if the date went well, and it got him interested, then all the better for both of them. Minako hoped it would go well. She wanted to see at least someone around here being happy, for once, and Junpei was at the top of her list. If a double date would make it easier on both of them, then Minako wanted to give them that double date.

"You and I should go," she said to Yosuke.

His reaction to that was…unexpected, to say the least.

"Wha-?" he stammered. "Wait, no, I couldn't…I mean, really? You want me to? I don't remember the last time I…but, wouldn't that be kinda weird? I mean, are you actually asking me on a-?"

"No, of course not," said Minako, shaking her head. "We're partners, remember? I just figure that if it's a casual thing, like Rise said, then it doesn't really matter which friends she brings, right? We'd just be there to help her break the ice with Junpei."

"Oh." Yosuke sounded confused, relieved, and deflated at the same time. Minako wondered if he'd been overdoing it in the Velvet Room again. "Yeah. Phew. That makes sense."

"So, you'll come?" asked Minako.

Yosuke had to think about it for a moment. "Uh, sure. It...will be fun."

"Great," said Minako. "Okay, I'll tell Rise."

**Chapter Twenty Five**

**Author's Note: **And now, an awkward first date. Be warned, this marks the last chapter before things start spiraling out of control. Be prepared for some relationships to end, some people to change drastically, and some hard decisions to get made. Everyone will walk away alive, but not necessarily in the same form they had when they went in.

I'd like to go ahead and tease you by telling you that, at some point later in this series, Yosuke is going to get a real love interest all of his own. I will make this horrible date up to him someday soon, I promise.

By the way, I just read this beautiful piece called **Confessions** by **Jenni Saba**.I think only the first chapter is up so far, but for those of you who are, like me Junpei fans, it's worth a read! Go check it out if you have a chance!

**Chapter Twenty Five**

Minako hurried home as soon as she got off work, to make sure that she had time to get dressed for her big "date." After pawing through several drawers full of clothing that she never wore, she decided that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea to try wearing one of the outfits that the other girls had picked out for her a few days ago at Croco Fur. True, she had no idea what any of the clothes actually looked like, if they flattered her, or even if they'd match her shoes, but Minako figured that it didn't really matter. After all, as Junpei had taught her, the first rule of being the best wingman was making your friend look really good. If Minako's outfit ended up making her look stupid, that would only make Rise look more poised and put together, and therefore she'd be able to consider the mission successfully accomplished.

Yosuke picked her up in his car, just after 7:00. "So, be honest," Minako insisted, as he helped her into the passenger seat. "How stupid do I look right now?"

"Um," muttered Yosuke. "Do those…colors really go together? I mean, not that I know a lot of stuff about clothes, or anything, but…"

"But," sighed Minako, "you do work a giant department store, so you know what people are wearing these days. Yeah, you're probably right. I was worried this might happen..."

"But, you look great!" added Yosuke hurriedly. "I didn't mean that you look bad…I mean, you never look bad. You just look…different. Different in a good way. Oh, man, I haven't dated in a while…"

Minako laughed. "Good thing this isn't a real date, then, right?"

"Uh, right," mumbled Yosuke. "Yeah, good thing, huh?"

As they drove together into Okina City, Minako couldn't help but think about the last time someone had referred to her as being "different in a good way." Tohru had used almost those same words not long after he'd tried to scare her away, that second time they'd met at the riverbank. Idly, she wondered what would have happened if Tohru had ever had the chance to ask her out on that date. What would it have been like to date him, and where would they have gone? Somewhere fancy, she thought, and probably in the city. After all, he had said that Inaba was a boring place to be.

"Hey, Minako?" asked Yosuke. "Uh, you're awfully quiet. I didn't mean to make you mad. Really, I think the skirt looks cute on you. Actually, I'm pretty sure Yukiko has one just like that, and it looks better on you. Don't…don't' tell her I said that. Please."

"You're very sweet, Yosuke, thank you," murmured Minako. Inwardly, she reminded herself that she was not allowed to be having these thoughts. It didn't matter what Tohru would have done. After all, even if he had managed to take her out, there was no reason to believe that he wouldn't have murdered her in a peevish rage after deciding he didn't' care for the main course.

At least, that was what everyone seemed to believe, and what they wanted for Minako to believe, but…she just couldn't picture it. Yu had told her that he and Tohru were essentially the same, but Minako couldn't picture that, either. There were a lot of very confusing, conflicting feelings going on in her head, none of them particularly sensible or grounded. Not of course, she reminded herself firmly, that it mattered. She had someone in her life. She was in the process of very carefully and meticulously getting over an alarming and unfortunate fascination with another man, and, right now, she was supposed to be focusing on being the best wingman for her best friend Junpei.

"So," she asked Yosuke, attempting to find her way back into the conversation. "When exactly was the last time you dated?"

"Well…" Yosuke sounded slightly embarrassed. "Actually, I think it was in middle school, maybe."

"Really?" asked Minako. "But you're a good looking guy. I would have thought the girls would be all over you."

"W-well, thanks," said Yosuke, in some surprise. "I don't know about that. I haven't really tried to date much since Saki-senpai died. I guess it would feel disloyal, somehow? Uh, that probably doesn't make sense…"

I, thought Minako, am a horrible human being. Junpei, who had once loved Chidori, was now dating for the first time in years after her death. Yosuke, who had cared deeply about his dead former senpai, was also still mourning her memory, and keeping himself single. Minako, on the other hand, actually had someone wonderful in her life, and yet she was wasting time fantasizing about other people.

"I think she'd probably want you to find someone else," Minako informed him. "If she cared about you, then she'd want you to be happy, wouldn't she?"

"She…didn't actually 'care about me' all that much," Yosuke said. " I think she thought I was pretty annoying. It's complicated. Oh, hey, is that it? I think we're here."

They had pulled up in front of the sandwich shop that had only recently become a thriving piece of Okina City's tourist appeal. Because it was so new, Minako had been afraid that they wouldn't be able to get in on such short notice, but she now saw that she shouldn't have been worried. Judging by the total silence all around them, Minako realized that there was not a single other person in the shop, and belatedly remembered that Rise had enough status and popularity to get private arrangements at just about any restaurant she wanted.

"Casual, huh?" asked Minako, as she and Yosuke got out of the car. "Did she actually rent the whole place?"

"It's not like that," insisted Yosuke."She probably didn't have a choice. When she goes into a restaurant, everyone comes in just to stand around and stare, or to ask for autographs. She wouldn't be able to eat here if she didn't clear it out first. Being a celebrity can be tough, I guess."

"I guess," agreed Minako. "Still, this is going to make it…awkward."

Rise and Junpei didn't appear to have arrived yet, so Minako waited while Yosuke explained that they were friends of hers, and managed to procure them a table. As they sat and waited for the couple to arrive, Minako frowned over the table top at Yosuke.

"For the record," she told him, "I think your Saki-senpai was missing out. I know it's wrong to speak ill of the dead, but, it doesn't sound like she knew how good you would have been to her. That's a shame. I don't think you're annoying."

For some reason, Yosuke didn't say anything. Minako hoped she hadn't offended him by criticizing the memory of the woman he'd loved.

She heard the door open behind him, and then a pair of heels came clicking into the room, followed by Junpei's familiar, almost sloppily casual step. "Hey, guys!" Rise called to them. "Wow, you beat us? No fair! Did you order already?"

Minako assured her that they hadn't, and everyone sat around at the table for a moment, mulling over the menus. Minako, who usually picked generic, easy things that any kitchen could make, sat back and waited, until Junpei suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, Mina-tan, you don't know what's on the menu. Hang on, I'll read it to you."

"I can do that," said Yosuke quickly, and before Minako had a chance to protest, he was reading out loud the entire list of sides, soups, and sandwiches available for purchase. Minako felt that she had to make a decision now that Yosuke had gone to all of the trouble, and selected a salad wrap and a glass of lemonade.

"Thanks, Yosuke," she said. "Sorry to make you do that. I bet you don't even know what you're going to order, yet. See? You're a great date."

She gave him a playful punch on the shoulder, but for some reason, he didn't laugh.

"So," asked Junpei, a little bit too loudly. Minako wondered if he was nervous, for a change. "Um, Hey, Yosuke, any ideas about what's next for the Velvet Room? Figured out how to defeat that rabbit shadow yet?"

"I think so," replied Yosuke, sounding relieved. "My original plan could still work. We can still try to cut it off from four sides and kill it that way. This time, we just need a fourth person who will actually do something useful…"

"Aw, don't be too hard on Nanako, man," insisted Junpei. "She's just a kid, after all. I mean, getting her involved in all of this was crazy in the first place."

Minako heard Yosuke's hand come down hard on the table. "That's a funny thing for you to say, after what happened last year," he reminded Junpei pointedly.

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence, during which Rise and Minako apparently reached the same, simultaneous conclusion.

"Let's not talk about The Velvet Room," began Minako. "After all, aren't we here to relax?"

At the same instant, she heard Rise saying, "Hey, I've got an idea! Let's talk about something else, okay?"

"Sure, whatever," muttered Junpei, and Minako breathed out a little sigh of relief. "What do you wanna talk about?"

Rise hummed thoughtfully for a moment. "How about," she said finally, "if I ask you some questions? Let's start with this one. What kind of girl do you like?"

Next to Minako, Yosuke spluttered something unintelligible, and just picturing the look on Junpei's face made it hard for Minako not to laugh out loud. She'd known, of course, that Rise was a very bold girl, but that question was so forward that it took her completely by surprise.

Junpei, apparently also surprised, said, "Uh…"

"Yeah, Junpei," added Minako, feeling that it was perhaps time for her to step up her "wingman" game on Rise's behalf. "I'm curious too. Tell us. What kind of girls do you like?"

"Wait, what…you too?" Junpei sounded betrayed. "Dude, Minako, you know what kind of girls I like. I like, uh…I don't' know, cute girls?"

Good start, thought Minako. Out loud, she said, "Come on, is that all we get? If you could describe the perfect girlfriend, what would she be like?"

Apparently, Junpei had to think about that for a moment. "I…" he muttered eventually, "I think she'd have to be a gentle kind of girl, you know? I like people who need my help sometimes. But, you know, not totally helpless. She's gotta kick a little bit of ass, otherwise she's boring. She has to stand up for things, too, like, she has to know what's important to her. Um…and I like redheads, I guess. Is that enough? Are you guys happy now?"

"Yep!" agreed Rise, who, possibly because of her hair color, now sounded like a very happy girl. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Minako, on the other hand, wasn't exactly "happy." Junpei, she realized, had just described Chidori. There was no way that he'd be able to move on if he was still caught up thinking about her every time someone asked him about dating or girls. Under the table, she gave him a gentle but pointed little kick.

"Huh? What?" asked Junpei.

Minako said nothing, but gave him her best attempt at a very significant look.

Then, Rise asked the unexpected question that caught both Minako and probably Yosuke totally off guard. "What about you, Yosuke? What kind of girls do you like?"

Luckily, before Yosuke had a chance to answer, the waiter arrived with the food. There were a few peaceful moments spent munching and tasting, before Rise, unperturbed by the interruption, repeated her question. "I asked you, Yosuke, what kinds of girls are your favorites? Come on, it's only fair that you have to answer, since Junpei already did."

"I don't see how that's fair…" mumbled Yosuke.

"Come on," insisted Rise cajolingly. "I'm sure Minako would like to know. Wouldn't you , Minako?"

Now it was Minako's turn to say "Um…"

Junpei stepped in, apparently on Minako's behalf. "Oh," he announced, "Minako's not picky. I mean, she's dated all different kinds of guys. First there was Akihiko-san, in high school, and now it's Shinjiro-san, right? And even though they're both pretty manly, they're totally different when you get to know them. Didn't you and that asshole Hidetoshi havea thing in high school, too? And I'm pretty sure that even Theodore once had a crush on her. I'm not sure what type of guy she'll go for next, but I bet he'll be a-!"

"Junpei!" exclaimed Minako in shock. "Why would you go and tell them all of that? You're making me sound like some kind of…some kind of prostitute or something!"

"Whoa! What? No, that's totally not what I meant!" Junpei sounded genuinely confused. "I mean, I was just saying that you haven't really picked out a type, yet. You're still in high school, right? I'm still young, too. It's not like either of us have to pick someone to spend the rest of our lives with. We're supposed to be playing the field, having experiences, learning things! That's all I meant."

Yet Junpei, thought Minako, had been more than ready to spend the rest of his life with Chidori. Maybe that disappointment had changed his mind about the way romance worked. After losing her, it might not be a bad idea, she reasoned, for him to spend some time "playing the field," as he put it.

She half expected Rise to be upset about that, but instead, Rise sounded relieved. "Oh my gosh," she insisted, "I totally agree with you. Wasn't I just saying that same thing to you the other day, Minako-chan?"

"Please," begged Minako, "let's…let's just eat."

They finished the meal in companionable spirits, and managed to steer clear of any topics that further embarrassed or shamed either Minako or Yosuke. After paying the bill, which, through Rise's influence, was much smaller than it would normally have been, they all walked out together towards their cars.

"Hey," said Junpei, pulling Minako aside to whisper too loudly into her ear. "Are you seriously that dense? Didn't you see the way that he was looking at you?"

Minako frowned. "The way that who was looking at me? Yosuke? Yeah, maybe you freaked him out when you started talking about how I might as well be a hooker."

"Oh wow," replied Junpei. "Seriously, wow, you are…almost embarrassingly bad at this game. Even worse than I am. Jeez."

With that cryptic remark still hanging in the air, Junpei and Rise said goodbye, got back into their car, and drove away.

"I think that went well," said Minako, as she climbed back into the passenger seat of Yosuke's car. "I mean, Rise seemed happy, and she and Junpei had a lot to talk about. I really hope it works out. Do you think next time he should ask her out on a date?"

Yosuke sounded tired as he turned on the car and checked his seatbelt. "I think," he told her, pulling out onto the road, "that I'm ready to go home."

**Chapter Twenty Six**

**Author's Note: **It is going to be a late night as I attempt to finish this twelve-hour audiobook that I am listening to in order to write a paper for class.

While I listen, I shall type up a chapter from my notebook.

It may be necessary to note that the song "Up All Night" was playing on the radio when I wrote this, which is possibly the reason that everyone in this chapter seems to be exhausted. Or maybe I'm just projecting. Both seem reasonable.

**Chapter Twenty Six**

After the date, Yosuke dropped Minako off outside the police station. Although she was technically supposed to have the evening off, Minako went because she knew she'd find Shinjiro there, working the night shift. She had ended up doing a lot of thinking over the last few hours, about boyfriends, dating, love, and what it meant to be young and unattached. She had also, very much against her conscious will, done far too much thinking about Tohru.

Right now, what she really wanted was to think about Shinjiro. Surely, if she could only spend some time with him like she used to, things would start to come together and make sense again in her head.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" he asked in surprise, as she came towards him through the darkened station, guided by the light of the flashlight Dojima had issued him. "I thought you were out with Junpei."

"I was," Minako assured him. "Yosuke just dropped me off."

Shinjiro grumbled a bit at that. "Don't see why you couldn't have waited for a night when I wasn't working," he muttered. "You didn't have to go with Yosuke. I would have taken you."

Minako sighed. "It wasn't about me this time, Shinji, it was about Junpei and Rise. I was just along to…you know, to add ambience, I guess? Anyway, you know perfectly well that there's nothing going on between Yosuke and me, so don't get all bent out of shape about it."

"Yeah," mumbled Shinjiro. "Fine."

Ever since she'd come into the room, Minako had been vaguely aware of the faint sounds of movement coming from somewhere behind Shinjiro's back. She could only assume that she was hearing Tohru shifting around in his cell.

For some reason, as soon as she realized this, Minako's head started to hurt again. It wasn't nearly as bad as it had been when the shadows were attacking her, but the ache was still pretty bad for just a stress headache. Maybe, she thought, she wasn't getting enough sleep these days…

"Shinji?" she asked. "When are you getting home tonight? I know you have to work late, but I don't mind waiting up, if you want me to."

"Nah," said Shinjiro. "Don't worry about it. They have me here until three in the morning. You sleep. You probably need it."

He gave her a quick little kiss on the forehead, probably expressing his gratitude over her offer to wait for him. Minako leaned into the kiss, and then pushed herself into his arms and reached up to kiss him full on the mouth. She felt him tense in surprise at her sudden closeness, and then he pressed her to him with one arm while both the kiss and the embrace deepened from an innocent expression of affection into something more aggressive and insistent.

"You're distracting as hell," muttered Shinjiro, moving away from her at last. "Go home. If you're hungry, there are leftovers in the fridge."

"Shinji," Minako began.

"Forget it, I'm not letting you stick around here," he interrupted her. "You're exhausted enough as it is. Besides, I can't focus when you're around. You throw me off."

Minako sighed. She didn't want to be at home by herself right now. She needed human contact, needed someone close to her. More than anything else, she wanted desperately to prove to herself that having Shinjiro there would at least make the strange, confusing feelings stop spinning around in her head.

"If you want to be helpful," murmured Shinjiro, relenting slightly, "then wait here for a minute while make a cup of coffee, okay? I'll be right back."

Before she could offer to go and make the coffee herself, Shinjiro's footsteps were heading away from her towards the kitchen.

"Was that for my benefit?" asked Tohru, as soon as Shinjiro's footsteps had disappeared.

Minako bit her lip. "I don't know what you're talking about," she told him.

"Really?" Tohru sounded somehow annoyed and amused at the same time. "Because if you're trying to make me jealous, you're doing a pretty good job. Like I said before, you're good at what you do."

"What I do?" Minako was doing her best not to lose her temper. She did not need Shinjiro to hear them from all the way over in the kitchen. "I don't 'do' anything. Why would I want you to be jealous?"

"Who knows?" asked Tohru philosophically. "I was actually hoping that you'd tell me that. After what you said this morning, I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep again until I find out why you'd want me to be jealous. You wouldn't want me to lose sleep, would you?"

Minako took a deep breath. "I don't care if you sleep or not," she informed him. "I don't care what happens to you."

"You know, you are a really terrible liar," murmured Tohru. "I like that about you. It's unusual."

Minako didn't have to think up a response, because she heard Shinjiro stalking back through the deserted station.

"I could probably take him," said Tohru. "I mean…okay, he's tall, yeah, but-!"

"Shut up," hissed Minako.

"Huh?" asked Shinjiro, placing a hand on her shoulder to help her find him. "Did you say something?"

Minako shook her head. "No," she told him. "Nothing. I'm going back. Wake me up when you get in, okay? And be careful. Please."

As she walked out of the station, Minako wasn't entirely sure what she wanted Shinjiro to be careful of. There wasn't any chance that Tohru would really try to "take" Shinjiro, was there?

Minako decided to try not to think about it. After all, Shinjiro would definitely win in a fight…wouldn't he?

**The next morning, at the Dojima residence…**

Yosuke, Yu, and Nanako were holding a council of war in Nanako's living room.

The entire investigation team, including Junpei and Shinjiro, was sitting around, on the couch and on the floor, listening intently as Yosuke outlined what he was trying not to think of as his master plan.

"It's very simple," he told them. "We all go in together, and four of us work to head the thing off. If that doesn't work, then we'll try a new team. Each of us having different skills, and different strengths. There's gotta be some way that at least one of us can find to kill it. It's not even attacking us, it's not like we have to focus on dodging or defending. We can go straight in for the kill. How hard could it be?"

He was trying to sound encouraging and optimistic, but even Yosuke knew that he looked tired. That 'date' of his and Minako's last night had been the farthest thing from relaxing that he could imagine, and he'd ended up losing sleep over that on top of being exhausted from trying to puzzle out the Velvet Room problem.

"I don't want anyone getting hurt on my account," insisted Yu, who, much to Yosuke's relief, had finally emerged from his bedroom looking haggard, but resolved. "It's not worth it."

"Dude," replied Yosuke, "it's absolutely worth it. There's no way you wouldn't do the same for any of us, right? I mean, you have done the same for most of us!"

"Besides," insisted Yukiko reasonably, "the shadow doesn't seem to want to hurt us. I can't imagine that we're in any real danger."

That, unfortunately, Yosuke could not agree with. For all that it may have looked innocent and skittish, he knew, the shadow was still a shadow. It could be capable of anything, and he wasn't willing to let his guard down or take any unreasonable risks.

"Um," said Nanako hesitantly. "I'm going too, okay? I'm sorry about last time. I won't get in the way this time. I promise."

Yosuke just nodded. He didn't like it for multiple reasons, not the least of which was that, being unwilling to fight, Nanako would be in even more danger than usual. At the same time, they couldn't possibly leave her behind, considering the power she'd already demonstrated, and the fact that she was, after all, the Wild Card. Maybe, if push came to shove, she'd come through for them. With the whole team in the Velvet Room together, it would be easier to protect and keep an eye on Nanako anyway.

"Hey," suggested Junpei. "You know, Minako's gonna be working at the police station all day. She's probably worried sick about you; you know how women get. Why don't you go over and hang out with her, Yu?"

"Yeah," agreed Chie enthusiastically. "Then if your head starts to hurt again. or something goes wrong, at least you won't be all by yourself!"

"Nothing," interjected Yosuke firmly, "is going to go wrong, got it?" After a moment, he added, "Uh, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to go to the station. At least they can probably find something for you to do there, to take your mind off of this stuff."

Eventually, Yu did agree to go to the police station, while Yosuke and the others headed for Junes. As they drove over, Yosuke wondered to himself why they'd never tried going in through the TV in the Dojima residence. After all, if Teddie and Rise were there with them, they'd probably be able to find their way to the Velvet Room and out again, no matter what entrance they went in from. Next time, he decided, they'd try it.

Igor and the three assistants were sitting patiently, watching the doorway when Yosuke and the team came in. Somehow, Yosuke was glad to see a t total lack of coloring books, although there was still evidence on the walls of the room where someone, perhaps Igor, or perhaps the assistants under his instruction, had torn down hastily-pasted up artwork.

"Ah, so you've come back to try again?" asked Igor. "Your perseverance is commendable. Margaret?"

Dutifully, Margaret stood up and led the others through the nightmare door.

"Hey, you know," said Yosuke, as they passed in together, "it's not like we can't find our own way in by now."

"It is appropriate," murmured Margaret, "that I show you due guidance in your journey."

The guidance is fine, thought Yosuke, but the total lack of personality is still creepy. Besides, it' wasn't as though Margaret, Elizabeth, or Theodore ever did anything useful. They just stood there and watched while the team took on whatever shadows were present in the room. Hadn't Yu once said that Margaret was actually really strong in a fight? If that was the case, then how come she never stepped in to help them? Even Yosuke had to admit that, at this point, they could have used all the help they could get.

"Okay," he said, once they were all ranged outside the door to Yu's mind. "I want Kanji on the right and Shinjiro-san on the left. Chie, you'll come up from behind, so get ready to move as soon as that door opens. I'll take the front. Is everybody ready?"

"Ready!" announced Chie, as she positioned herself accordingly.

"Yup, all set, senpai," agreed Kanji.

"Let's just do this already," grunted Shinjiro.

On Yosuke's signal, the rest of the unassigned party members stepped back, leaving Margaret room to open the door.

Then, something suddenly occurred to Yosuke, something which had been unconsciously bothering him even as he had been looking over and choosing the members of the initial assault team.

"Wait," he began. "Where's Nanako?"

It was too late. Margaret opened the door, and the rabbit shadow blinked out at them from the darkness. Everyone was tensed to spring, and Yosuke didn't dare risk waiting too long and losing the chance to attack.

"Go!" he shouted.

The next few moments were a slow motion blur. Yosuke saw Chie cut the shadow off as it lunged backwards, which pushed it directly into Shinjiro, who swung at it with his axe, and sending it hurtling towards Kanji. As Kanji drove the shadow forward again towards Yosuke, Yosuke caught sight, out of the corner of his eye, of Nanako, several feet away, in front of the door to Minako's mind.

"Nanako!" he shouted. "What are you doing? Stop!"

Nanako either couldn't hear him, or wasn't listening. Unable to focus on the shadow rabbit any longer, Yosuke watched Nanako reach forward and pulled open the door, revealing the dark, shining coils of a great, loathsome looking shadow snake with piercingly evil yellow eyes. The snake's eyes fixed on Nanako, and Yosuke prepared to run towards it to defend her.

Before the snake had a chance to attack, however, the rabbit shadow, now free to run, bounded forward past Yosuke and directly into the path of the snake. Distracted, the snake swung its head around towards the rabbit, and then, in a single, terrifying movement, the snake's head shot forward and it's jaws closed around the rabbit shadow, snapping it up and devouring it in a single swallow.

"What the shit-?" began Kanji in horror.

"Nanako-chan!" screamed Chie. "Get out of there!"

Yosuke started running. With his feet pounding the breath out of his lungs with every stride, he rushed over and swung Nanako up into his arms, throwing himself bodily out of the way as the snake's head darted forward and just barely missed intercepting him.

"Oh my god," wailed Yukiko. "Yosuke, look!"

Yosuke, now with Nanako safely tucked away behind him, looked.

The snake shadow was growing. As it chewed the last few remnants of shadow essence that had once been the elusive rabbit, it's coils were increasing in size, faster and faster, until it's head was pressing against the ceiling of the room. From its vantage point above them, the snake loomed over the team, baring it's fangs and hissing menacingly.

Then, it did something Yosuke knew it wasn't supposed to be able to do.

It slithered out of the doorway, and headed right for the little group.

**Chapter Twenty Seven**

**Author's Note: **Special thanks to **EmD23 **for posting a review on my last chapter that made me laugh so hard I almost choked on myself in the middle of tonight's class on "Literacy and the Early Childhood Curriculum." I needed that.

I have to go into work so early tomorrow for various reasons that there isn't actually any point in my sleeping tonight. I mean, I have to be up again for work in a matter of a couple of hours.

So, while I lie here awake, resenting my boss, here is a second update.

**Chapter Twenty Seven**

Minako and Yu were sitting at Dojima's desk, trying to relax over a cup of coffee while the detective himself was out investigating the scene of a local storefront robbery. Minako had been working as hard as she could for the last hour to try and take Yu's mind off of whatever might be going on inside the Velvet Room, but it wasn't working. She knew, of course, that the reason she couldn't distract him was that she was just as worried sick as he was.

"What time is it?" asked Yu, for probably the sixteenth time in the last few minutes.

"I don't know," replied Minako, sighing. "I can't see the clock."

"Oh, of course. Um. I'm sorry," mumbled Yu. "That was inconsiderate of me."

Minako shook her head. "Not really," she told him. "I think I'd feel worse if you spent all of your time thinking about what I can and can't do."

She heard Yu's chair roll around in a circle, as Yu apparently turned to see the clock for himself. "It's almost noon," he informed her. "They've been in there for an hour. That's a long time. Something might be wrong."

"They've been gone for an hour," Minako corrected him. "They've probably only actually been in the Velvet Room for half that time. Really, you're only going to make yourself crazy obsessing over it like this. You need to take a deep breath, and try to think about something else."

There was a short silence before Yu asked, "How do you do it? Relax, I mean? What do you do to stop yourself worrying?"

"I…" began Minako, biting her lip. Finally, she shrugged, and admitted, "I don't. There isn't anything. We just have to accept that there's nothing we can do. Let's talk about something else. Um…"

"How did your date with Yosuke go, last night?" asked Yu, unexpectedly.

Minako frowned. "My what? Don't you mean Junpei's date with Rise? It went, uh…actually, I think it could have gone better, but Rise and Junpei seem to get along very well. Junpei must have been nervous, because he started saying some really awful things about me…I'll have to get him back for that later. Why do you ask?"

"Oh," murmured Yu casually, "no reason. Yosuke just called me last night after he got back. He said that it had been a 'tough night'. I wondered why, but, he didn't want to talk about it."

Minako opened her mouth to respond to that, but was stopped by Yu's sudden grunt of pain. "Yu?" she asked. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"My…head," managed Yu, around gritted teeth. "It's pounding, like…like it's trying to break apart."

Minako reached out and found him, pressing her fingertips to his forehead. Beads of sweat were beginning to form around his brow, and she could feel his breathing getting more and more labored as she sat there.

"I'll get some painkillers," she told him, standing up and turning to reach for her bag. "Shinji makes me pack them every morning before I go to work, so I'm sure I've got some in here that we can use. It always worked for me when I-!"

Yu screamed. It was a gut wrenching, ear-splitting sound, so jarring in comparison to his usual soft-spoken manner that Minako took a step back in shock. "Oh god, it hurts…" he moaned. "I can't breathe…I can't…"

Painkillers, Minako realized, were not going to help. This was bad, far worse than any shadow-borne headache that she'd ever experienced. Something terrible must be happening in the Velvet Room, she knew, and the torment in Yu's voice made it very clear that whatever was happening would cripple him horribly if it didn't stop happening soon. On top of that, all of her friends were in there right now. Whatever it was they were facing was bigger and scarier than they had expected. Both they and Yu were in some kind of serious danger. Minako tried not to panic.

"Yu?" she said. "You need to listen to me. Try to listen to me, focus on my voice, okay? You need to breathe. Force it if you have to, even if it hurts."

Dutifully, painstakingly, Yu forced out a couple of shallow, aching breaths. "Ow," he muttered. "Crap…"

"Good." Minako gave his shoulder an encouraging little squeeze. "Look, something must be happening inside the TV. We just need to wait until they get things under control, and then I'm sure…"

But she was lying, and she knew it. Yu probably knew it too. It was very possible, based on the severity of the attack, that things were not going to get under control. Minako wondered desperately if there was any way that she could get into the Velvet Room, to figure out just exactly what was going on. Even if she could get in, she knew, there was nothing that she could possibly do to help. She was completely useless without her persona, and it had never been as frustrating before as it was just then. Minako felt like screaming herself.

Then, in a moment of alarming clarity, she remembered. She and Yu weren't the only people in the room who had used a persona before. There was someone else here, who would have access to the Velvet Room.

"Yu," she said again. "We're gonna fix this. We're going to make it stop hurting, but I need you to help me. I can't do this by myself. We have to find your uncle's keys."

"Keys?" whispered Yu. "Why…keys?"

"I don't have time to explain," insisted Minako."Please, just trust me. I need your eyes."

At first, Yu didn't move, and Minako wondered if maybe he'd passed out from all of the unbearable pain. After a tense moment, however, she heard him swivel very slowly around in his chair.

"On the desk," he told her breathlessly. "Next to the paperweight."

Minako rain her hands over the desktop until she touched Dojima's prized paperweight, a present that Nanako had made for him in her kindergarten class. Next to it, just as Yu had described, were a familiar set of metal keys. Minako picked them up, and then shoved them into the pocket of her jacket. "I'll be right back," she promised him. "Just hang in there. Don't leave. You have to be here when I get back, okay?"

"What…" managed Yu. "Minako, what are you-?"

Minako, however, wasn't listening. She ran over to the cells, and heard Tohru stand up as she approached.

"You're a persona user, aren't you?" she asked him, getting right to the point. "I know you are. You can get into the TV world. You can get into the Velvet Room, can't you?"

"What?" asked Tohru, apparently too taken aback to make any of his usual snide remarks. "What are you talking about? And who screamed? What the hell is going on?"

"Can you," demanded Minako, "or can you not get into the Velvet Room? This is important!"

"Should have known you'd have a persona," muttered Tohru. "After all, you are one of that bunch of goody two-shoes brats. Anyway, what do you need me for? If you can use a persona, then you can get in by yourself, can't you?"

"No," Minako began, "I can't. I don't have a persona anymore." She considered telling him that she didn't have time to explain, but immediately realized that this man didn't owe her any favors. Without a full explanation, she might not be able to get him to help her.

"Okay," she said with a sigh. "Listen."

As quickly and succinctly as she could, Minako explained everything. She told Tohru about her death at Gekkoukan, when she'd become the seal, and then about the sacrifice she and Yu had both made when they'd given up part of their souls to re-form that seal. She explained about the shadows that had taken over her and Yu's minds, about the headaches, and about how her friends had gone in only an hour before.

"And now," she finished finally, "I need to get in there so I can figure out what's wrong with Yu!"

"Wow," muttered Tohru slowly. "None of that makes…any sense at all. I'm starting to think you might actually be crazy."

"I'm not crazy!" insisted Minako desperately. "Tohru, I need you to throw me into the TV!"

There was a moment of stunned silence before Tohru responded.

"Do you want to run that by me again?" he asked her. "The part about how you're not crazy, but you want me to throw you into the TV? Do you know what kind of stuff happens to people who get thrown in without personas?"

Minako shook her head impatiently. "It's different with me," she informed him. "I don't have a shadow self, I already gave it up to form the seal. I'll be fine. My friends might not be. I have to do something!"

"But you already said that there's nothing you can do," countered Tohru. "Aren't you being a little irrational about all this? Even if I did get you in there, which I'm not saying I'm gonna do, then you'd just end up being a dumbass and getting yourself killed by…by whatever it is. Why not just let them do what they've gotta do? You're safer out here. They're the ones who decided to play heroes."

"I need to try," she repeated. "I need to! Maybe there is something! Besides, Tohru, Nanako's in there!"

That, as Minako had hoped, got a reaction. Tohru sucked in a sharp, surprised breath. "Nanako-chan," he murmured. "Why the hell would she…but she's just a kid."

Minako wanted to respond to that, to encourage him to be more worried about Nanako. Before she'd managed to even form the sentence, however, a sudden and mercilessly pounding pain took control of her skull, and she instantly doubled over on to the floor, clutching at her head with both hands and sobbing out a breathless wail that she could feel sucking all of the air out of her lungs.

"Hey!' Somewhere nearby, Tohru's voice was calling her to her through the agony. "Hey! Snap out of it!"A hand grabbed at Minako's arm as she fell back against the bars of the cell. "Damnit," muttered Tohru. "Can't reach."

"Ow…" Minako didn't know if she'd spoken the word out loud, or not. She was swimming in a sea of awful, mind-numbing pain, unable to think of anything except how desperately she wanted it to stop.

"Whoa, hey," shouted Tohru, sounding uncharacteristically scared. "Stay with me, okay? Listen, I'll do it. I'll get you into the TV, just…just don't die on me, got it? Did you hear me? Hey, Minako?"

Taking the same advice she'd given to Yu, Minako forced herself to breathe, dragging a few torturous breaths in and out of her lungs as she pushed herself unsteadily back on to her feet. She contorted her face into what she knew wasn't really a smile, and rasped out, "You…never use my real name. You must be…really freaked out."

"Shit…" muttered Tohru, obviously relieved. "If you could see yourself right now, you'd know why. Are you sure you can-!"

Minako was already trying out the different keys in the lock on the cell door. It took her three tries to find the right one, and as soon as she felt the lock click open, she half walked, and half fell forward into the cell,

"Don't try to run," she told Tohru, as she fumbled with the keys again, searching with her fingers for the lock on Dojima's handcuffs. "If you do, I'll…stop you."

Tohru laughed incredulously. "Seriously?" he asked. "You'll stop me, huh? You can barely even stand up on your own. Here." Passing an arm around her waist, Tohru helped her steady herself against his side. "What are you doing with those cuffs?"

Minako was in the process of unlocking one of the cuffs, and then re-locking it around her own wrist. "I told you," she reminded him. "I'm not letting you escape."

"Jeez, you really are an idiot," said Tohru. "I'm a lot stronger than you. Look." Minako felt a sharp tug, and then she found herself dragged forward by the wrist. Taking her other wrist in his now free hand, Tohru held her hard for a moment, murmuring, "See? And now, we have a problem, because I'm free, and you're trapped. Did you even try to think this one through first?"

"Yes," breathed Minako. "I did." She didn't bother to try to struggle free of his grip. "I know that you meant what you said at the riverbank. You want to be the person I saw when I first met you, right? You want to be somebody's hero? Well, this is your chance. It may be your last chance, but it's a really good one. If you're gonna prove to yourself and to everyone else that you're still a human being, then this is where you do it. So? Are you in, or out?"

Tohru let Minako's wrist fall limply out of his hand. "You really are something else," he muttered. "You do know what a terrible idea this is, right?"

"Yeah," agreed Minako. Taking a deep, controlled breath, she put one foot forward, and then the other, managing to get her feet into a rhythm that guided them through the pain. "You're going to have to lead," she informed him, "and I'm going to have to trust you."

"Do you?" asked Tohru.

"No," admitted Minako. "But we're both running out of other options."

**Chapter Twenty Eight**

**Author's Note: **So…my wrist keeps throbbing whenever I clench my hand in a certain way. Typing is kind of painful, but it's not too terrible yet…and I have to finish this story! There are only a few chapters left to go! I can do it!

I'm a woman on a mission.

Oh, by the way, everyone should go and check out **Memories of You**, by **ReachingOutFES, **and beta read by **Gin Nanashi.** It's a Minato and Minako story, which I know that lots of you would love. They are both awesome people and the story is magnificent! You won't be disappointed.

**Chapter Twenty Eight**

As they stepped out of the station, Minako slipped her one shackled hand into Tohru's, and felt him start in surprise.

"Uh," he began, "so, hand holding…that's not really my thing."

"I don't like it any better than you do," Minako informed him. "It's not like I want to hold your hand. I just don't want anyone to notice the handcuffs."

"Well, jeez, way to let me down easy," muttered Tohru.

Exasperated, Minako did not bother to dignify that with a response.

"Are we taking the bus?" asked Tohru, after a moment. "Someone might recognize me. I mean, I have been a pretty popular guy, lately."

"We're walking," said Minako, shaking her head. "Or, running, I guess. We have to hurry, there may not be much time. Yu's still waiting for us back at the station."

Suiting the word to the action, she began to run, but had to stop short when she found herself encumbered by the hand that was still attached to Tohru. "Come on!" she insisted. "What are you waiting for? Let's go already!"

"Cut it out," commanded Tohru. "This isn't getting you anywhere. The bravado is cute, and all, but you can barely walk. If you overdo it and pass out, I'm getting out of here, and you're going to have to explain that to Dojima-san when he gets back. Then you'll be screwed."

"You can't get away as long as I've got the key to the handcuffs," Minako reminded him.

"Yeah," agreed Tohru. "And if you pass out, I'm gonna get to search you for that key, and don't think I won't enjoy it, either. Nope, it looks like we're gonna have to take it slow."

With that, Tohru began leading Minako forward by the hand, walking at what Minako felt had to be a snail's pace. Every now and then, a fresh wave of nauseating pain would wash over her, and she would have to stop to catch her breath and pull herself together. The minutes felt like hours as the pair pushed painstakingly, haltingly forward towards Junes.

"You're pretty bent out of shape over this," remarked Tohru, unnecessarily. "Your friends sure mean a lot to you, huh?"

Minako nodded, biting her lip. "I know they'd do the same for me," she managed, stumbling and catching herself for the umpteenth time.

"You sure about that?" asked Tohru. "Because in my experience, people are a lot more disappointing in real life than they are in your head. They tend to let you down when you least expect it."

"So you've decided to just expect it all the time?" countered Minako."I've said it before, but you really need some new friends. Are we there yet?"Minako was aware that the atmosphere around them had changed. The air was denser, more populated now, and the press of bodies and the rising murmur of conversation alerted her to the fact that they were probably getting closer to their destination.

"Where are we?" she asked. "Is this the food court? We need to go into the electronics department."

Someone brushed past Minako's shoulder, unbalancing her and sending her teetering over to collide with Tohru. Pushing her back on to her feet, he muttered, "I know that. Relax. I said I'd get you in there, didn't I?"

After a few more tense moments of navigating the crowd, Minako heard Tohru open a door, and they passed together into a significantly quieter, cleaner smelling room, full of the sounds of beeping monitors. "You're in luck," said Tohru, as he pulled Minako to a stop. "There isn't anybody else here right now. Let's just get this over with."

Minako began to fumble in her pocket for the key to the handcuffs. Then, just as she was preparing to unlock them, she paused, realizing that she couldn't just leave Tohru out here alone, and still expect to find him here when she got back.

"Um," she mumbled.

Tohru sighed. "What," he asked, "You just figured it out? Yeah, I'm coming, too. Think of it this way; if I push you in, and then you die in there, someone else will have to start all over with this little "reclaim Tohru Adachi's soul" project of yours. It's probably better if we just go together."

"What if I had let you go?" asked Minako. "Would you have come with me anyway?"

She felt Tohru's arm move up and down as he shrugged. "What's the point of that question?" he asked her. "Sure, I'll let you believe that if you want. Anyway, here we go."

Minako felt herself suddenly yanked forward, and then there was the strange but familiar sensation of falling into a fuzzy, blurred-out moment in time. She hit the ground on her hands and knees, but was relieved to feel that the handcuffs were still secure. At least she hadn't managed to lose her prisoner during the trip into the TV. Yosuke had warned her that sometimes, things like ropes got disconnected in transit.

"Do you see the Velvet Room door?" She asked.

"Sure," said Tohru. "We're sitting right in front of it."

Minako took a deep breath. "Okay," she instructed him. "Let's try to go through the door together. I may be able to get through if we're holding on to each other at the time. It worked before when my friends tried it, so maybe it will work for me too. It's worth a shot, anyway."

Again, Minako felt the shrug, and then she and Tohru were moving forward. They took three, four, five paces before Minako's body slammed up against an unseen wall, and she staggered back again.

"No good, huh?" asked Tohru.

Minako shook her head. She was stunned, but not actually hurt. "Try again," she said.

They tried again, twice, but each time, Minako found herself blocked by the unseen barrier. Every time she impacted against it, she felt the pain in her head worsen slightly, until both the pain and her rising panic began to mix together into an overwhelming feeling of desperation.

"It's not working," she gasped, more to herself than to Tohru. "I can't get in. I can't get to them."

"Hey," said Tohru, but Minako wasn't listening.

Reaching forward until she found the wall again, Minako banged mercilessly against it with both fists. "Theodore!" she called out. "Margaret! Elizabeth! Junpei, Yosuke! Anybody, please!" Images were beginning to swirl through her pain-soaked mind. They were images of Yu, screaming, writing in his chair, and of Junpei lying on the ground with some horrible horse/rabbit shadow gnawing on the side of his head.

"Please!" she yelled, her breath coming out in gasps as she threw herself as hard as she could against the wall. "Please, let me in! Let me IN!" Tears began to well up in her eyes and overflow on to her face. Something horrible, she knew was happening to her friends in there, and there was nothing she could do even to get past the front door.

"Stop it!" Tohru had her around the waist and was pulling her forcefully back from the wall. "Knock it off!"

For the second time that day, he sounded genuinely worried, and the strangeness of hearing that tone in his voice made Minako sit back for a moment and listen.

"I'll go," Tohru was saying. "Okay? Do you hear me? You're no use like this anyway. I'll bust in there and save your dumbass friends, if that's what you want, just stop beating yourself against the wall! And quit crying. You're ugly when you cry, and that's no good."

"What?" asked Minako blearily. Everything hurt. The world hurt. Thinking hurt. "You'll…what?"

"Give me the key," demanded Tohru.

Somehow, Minako managed to get the key out of her pocket and hand it to him. She heard it click into the lock on the handcuffs, and then the cuffs fell away, leaving her wrist free and aching slightly from the pressure.

"Don't die on me, blind girl," muttered Tohru. "It'd be boring as hell if you died on me now."

Then, his voice was gone, and so was his presence. Minako sank down to the ground, and rested her head against the cool floor as the world around her filled up with pain, and went suddenly silent.

**Meanwhile, in the Velvet Room...**

Things were bad, and getting worse. Yosuke and the entire investigation team had been throwing every attack and spell they had at the giant shadow snake for what felt like ages. The trouble was that the snake, much like the rabbit it had devoured, seemed to be able to dodge easily around everything they tried. This time, however, the snake had no problem attacking them in turn.

Naoto, who had already taken two heavy blows from the snake's coils, muttered at Yosuke through her teeth. "Fear," she told him breathlessly. "The rabbit shadow was fear…and other emotions, almost all other emotions can feed off of fear."

"Not helpful right now," said Yosuke, slamming the shadow with a garudyne attack and watching the snake simply slide itself to one side. "Not unless you can use that philosophical crap to find a way to kill it!"

Yosuke stopped, distracted, because the snake had suddenly turned its attention away from him, and was now staring balefully at the doorway leading into Yu's psychological sanctum. It sat there for a moment, unmoving and focused. A cold shiver of dread trickled uncomfortably down Yosuke's spine.

"What's it doing?" he asked of no one in particular.

Then, the snake moved.

Bunching its coils together, it suddenly hunkered down and lashed out in all directions, spreading its coils wide and wild across the room. The giant body of the snake pressed and pounded against all four walls of the room, relentlessly smashing into them again and again, until the walls began to disintegrate slowly, bit by bit, and to drift up and vanish in clouds of what looked like the same shadow essence that dead shadows turned into.

"Oh my god," whispered Chie. "Oh my god, it's-!"

"We must get out of here immediately," said Margaret. Yosuke blinked. Until that moment, he had completely forgotten that she was even in the room. "The shadow is going to destroy the thresholds of the mind. We must evacuate before the room comes crumbling down around us."

Evacuate? Yosuke shook his head. If the shadow was going to destroy the whole room, then that meant…

"What'll happen to Yu and Minako?" he asked. "If this thing destroys the doors, then what does that mean for them?"

Margaret just shook her head. "I do not know," she admitted. "This is not something that I have ever witnessed before as a resident of this Velvet Room."

Whatever it was, thought Yosuke, it wouldn't be good. If the room was destroyed, did that mean that Yu and Minako's minds would be destroyed as well? Would they go crazy, or would they…

He didn't want to finish the rest of that thought. It didn't matter anyway, he realized, what would happen if the room was destroyed, because Yosuke Hanamura was not going to let it be destroyed in the first place. His partners were out there, counting on him to protect them from whatever horrible crazy thing was trying to happen right now, and he was going to protect them if it was the last thing he ever did.

"Naoto!" he shouted across at her."Try megidolaon again!"

It's no use, Yosuke-senpai," insisted Naoto, ducking to one side as one of the snake's coils pounded dangerously close to her head. "I have tried everything within my power, but nothing is having any effect. I have no more skills to attempt. I am sorry."

"There has to be something that will work on it!" Yosuke was unwilling to give up. "Nothing is invincible, right? There's always something!"

Behind him, he heard the door to the Velvet Room open, followed immediately by a gasp of surprise from Chie. Turning just enough to see the doorway out of the corner of his eye, Yosuke was stunned and horrified to see Adachi striding in through the open door. "Wait, what?" he exclaimed. "How did he get out? What's he doing here? Somebody do something. Kanji, get your-!"

But Kanji, as Yosuke could see, was pinned against one wall by the snake, in the process of trying and failing to beat it to death with his chair. "No can do, senpai," he muttered.

"Then, Yukiko, I need you to-!" began Yosuke, but Yukiko, too, was in the middle of casting a healing spell on Teddie, who was in turn casting a healing spell on Junpei, who seemed to have been knocked unconscious to the ground.

"Adachi-san!" called Nanako, ducking under the snake to rush across the room to his side. "Look out! It's dangerous in here, there's a giant snake!"

"What the hell…" muttered Adachi, staring up into the yellow eyes of the shadow. "What is that thing?"

"It's trying to kill Big Bro!" sobbed Nanako breathlessly. "And Minako, too! If it breaks the whole room, then she and Big Bro will…" Nanako ducked out of the way just in time as the snake's head darted down and tried to snap her up in its jaws.

"Oh yeah?" asked Adachi, stepping in front of Nanako and pushing her back out of the way of the snake. "I don't really like the sound of that. Maybe it's time we taught it a lesson."

As Yosuke watched, sickened but unable to focus long enough to stop it, Adachi's face hardened into the crazed, bitter smile that still haunted Yosuke's dreams three nights out of five. The man's whole posture changed, and he seemed to both hunch and get taller at the same time, reaching into his pocket with one hand to pull out an all too familiar looking card.

"Persona," he whispered.

**Chapter Twenty Nine**

**Author's Note: **So, I keep the radio on a lot when I work. While I was writing the beginning of this chapter, the radio decided to play "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark," which is, apparently, by Fall Out Boy, not a band that I ever listen to. Still, I think that song would probably be a good choice to listen to while you're reading the beginning of this chapter, as it fits remarkably well. I looked through the rest of their music, though, and I can't say I like any of it…oh well. Can't win 'em all.

WARNING: This is a full-fledged Ari Moriarty-style finale. We will lose characters in these next two chapters, although we're not quite looking at "character death," as such. Things are gonna happen. Okay, enough out of me, let's just get to the chapter.

**Chapter Twenty Nine**

Instinctively, Yosuke took a step back from Adachi, watching as the rest of the team did the same thing. Only Nanako seemed willing to stay near him, peering out from behind his back as Magatsu Izanagi leapt forth out of the chaos of his tortured mind. There were veins standing out on Adachi's forehead as he muttered something to himself, and then a column of heat erupted around him as he beefed himself up for an attack.

"Nanako," called Yosuke. "Come here."

Nanako, however, didn't appear to be listening. She was watching, wide-eyed, as Adachi's persona took a massive swipe at the snake shadow's head with its vorpal blade. The attack didn't' connect, but the snake stopped beating it's coils against the walls just long enough to turn its menacing attention to the persona attacking it.

"Damnit," said Adachi, shaking his head and grinning mirthlessly at the snake. "Seriously? Fine, okay. Ziodyne!" A torrent of lightning hammered down around the body of the snake, but again, it managed to dodge every blow.

"Tch," muttered Adachi. "Just die already…"

The snake did not die. Instead, it slammed Adachi with two of its bunched up coils, sending him crashing backwards on to the ground. As he lay there for a moment, slightly stunned, Yosuke watched, fascinated, as a trickle of blood slid down from Adachi's forehead. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yukiko tense slightly, but she didn't move. She and Teddie exchanged a significant look, but again, neither of them seemed willing to step in on behalf of this man who had almost cost them their lives and the lives of people they loved.

Nanako, however, apparently had no such misgivings. Her persona, Dawn, had disappeared when she'd turned to hide behind Adachi, and now she summoned Icarus, who crept out in front of Adachi with his wings spread out, in what looked like a pathetic attempt to ward off the snake's oncoming attack.

"Knock it off," snarled Adachi. "That's not gonna help. Just get out of the way and let me-!"

"No," said Nanako, in a voice so quiet that Yosuke could barely hear her from where he was standing. "Not this time."

Icarus' wings erupted into flame, forming a wall of fire in front of both Nanako and Adachi. They both had to step back to avoid the unbearable heat, and Yosuke heard Adachi grunt in surprise. The snake lunged forward and bit down on one of the wings, then let out a wild, unearthly moan of anguish as it threw itself back against the wall, disintegrating a few more inches of the room as it did so.

"Ooops," whispered Nanako. "Sorry…"

"Hey," Kanji remarked, as the battle waged on without them. "Teddie, I thought you said that shadows don't' really feel pain."

"Um…" Teddie frowned. "I lied. I mean, I sort of lied. Most shadows don't' feel pain. Remember, though, I'm a shadow, and I get hurt all the time, so…"

From around the wall of fire, Magatsu Izanagi threw out a darkness attack that the snake, apparently blocked by Icarus' wings, didn't see in time to react. This time, and for the first time, an attack actually hit the snake, and it hissed in anger as its coils bunched up closer in upon themselves. The snake's tail reached out and wrapped itself around Nanako's leg, beginning to pull her forward towards it, but a quick slice of Magatsu Izanagi's vorpal blade angered the snake enough to distract it and to force it to let go of the little girl.

"If the shadow is a part of Yu's mind," asked Yukiko cautiously, "do you think that it hurts Yu when the shadow gets hurt?"

"Um…I don't know," admitted Teddie. "It might hurt Sensei and Minako-chan, at this point…I don't think the shadow belongs to either of them, now. I think after it ate the rabbit, it became a part of both of them, maybe."

So, thought Yosuke, if we don't kill it, then it will destroy them by breaking their minds into pieces. If we do attack it, and manage to hit it, then every time we do damage, it will hurt them anyway.

"What are we supposed to do, then?" he shouted desperately, to no one in particular.

The snake hurled its body into the wall again, right next to the door to Minako's mind. As the pieces of the wall crumbled away, Yosuke suddenly heard the distant but bone-chilling echo of a scream, coming from somewhere outside of the room itself.

"Minako," mumbled Shinjiro, turning white.

Adachi stood still for a moment, and Yosuke saw something new in his eyes, something that was almost like panic. It jarred drastically with the anger and malicious glee that had been stamped on his features only a moment before.

"Atom smasher!" Adachi shouted, hurling himself into a fresh attack with renewed force. Shinjiro and Junpei were running forward as well, each of them with their evokers already held against their heads, prepared to join in the fight.

Yosuke had every intention of going with them, until he realized that Nanako was beginning to sag under the pressure of keeping up Icarus' flaming barrier. Something about whatever that spell entailed was really taking it out of her, and Yosuke could see that she was breathing hard, and that her eyelids were fluttering as though she was going to pass out.

"Nanako!" he called, taking a step towards her. Before he could move, however, Teddie was at Nanako's side, supporting her with one hand while his persona began to heal her. For a brief moment, Teddie's eyes met Yosuke's, and Yosuke nodded once. Then, he rushed forward and threw himself full force into the onslaught against the shadow.

The battle waged on for what felt like hours. Although every member of the team was beginning to feel the strain of having been fighting for so hard and for so long, the fact that they were now at least able to successfully strike the enemy strengthened and buoyed them, giving them fresh will to fight. Eventually, the combined onslaught of Yosuke and his friends began to drive the snake back. It was weakening, Yosuke knew, and would soon be beaten. They were going to win the day.

Still, something was terribly wrong. The more the snake suffered, the harder it pushed and beat against the walls of the room, and the entire room was now dangerously close to collapsing. Yosuke wondered helplessly to himself if there was any way that they could stop the crumbling of the walls. Reaching out with one hand, he tried physically supporting the structure, but to no avail. The walls were made of something that dissolved at the snake's touch, something like the shadows, which could disintegrate the moment they accepted defeat.

"It's no use," he mumbled out loud. "We can't…we can't save them. It's over."

Even as that horrible realization began sinking, unwelcome, into his mind, Yosuke felt a light touch on his shoulder. Turning, he saw that Margaret was standing behind him, watching the disintegration of the walls with a sad but oddly understanding look on her face. "There is a way," she told him quietly. "It is up to the wielder of the Wild Card to decide."

"Up to me?" Nanako, still straining under the weight of Icarus, frowned. "What…what can I do?"

From somewhere he definitely hadn't been before, Theodore appeared, accompanied by Elizabeth. "We have told you before," he instructed Nanako and Yosuke, "that this place is only a construct created by your minds. Everything you see is a representation of your own minds and souls."

"That means us, too," remarked Elizabeth. "We are a part of this place, just as we are a part of your minds."

"Our shape is dictated by what you have imagined and selected," agreed Margaret, "interpreted by our Master and solidified by your interactions with us. It is not, however, static. In times of crisis, you may choose to bend your mind to your own will."

"It is our sole responsibility to protect the sanctity of your mind," finished Theodore.

Nanako shook her head. "I don't understand," she told them. "I'm sorry, but, I don't. What does it all mean, about minds, and protection? I didn't make you up. You were already here when I came. Remember?"

"As residents of the Velvet Room," continued Theodore, "we anticipate and interpret your innermost psychological needs and impressions. Those needs give us power, strength, all the tools required to aid you. We understand what it is you need of us, and over time have grown to come to recognize our needs of you. We are here when you require assistance, just as you have taught us more about what it is like to be you. This same symbiosis prompts and compels me to ask you; do you require us to save your friends?"

"Um, yes!" Nanako glanced over at Yosuke and Teddie, but neither of them could make any more sense of Theodore's words than she could. "Of course! Please, save them!"

Margaret, Elizabeth, and Theodore looked at each other in that calm, composed way that they always seemed to manage even in the midst of a crisis. Except for the time when Elizabeth had gone rogue and attempted to re-seal Yu to save Minako, Yosuke had almost never seen the assistants even momentarily flustered. The slightest flicker of regret and sadness in Margaret's eyes alerted Yosuke immediately to the fact that something was about to happen, something that went way beyond anything that Nanako had imagined when she'd asked the three of them to save her friends.

"Wait," said Yosuke, suddenly unwilling and worried. "Hold on a moment, we want to know what-!"

It was, however, too late. Just as the snake had grown in size after devouring the rabbit, the three assistants now began to grow and stretch, reaching out towards each other as their physical forms began to take over the space in the room. As their hands met, they formed a sort of twisted human triangle, closing their eyes and each clasping the hands of the others tightly in their own. Then, they seemed to melt back into the walls of the room, and everything went white and blinding in a sudden unexpected and explosive glow.

As his eyesight slowly returned, Yosuke watched Adachi deliver the finishing blow to the snake shadow, which hissed one last parting shot at the team before erupting into red and black shadow essence. Then, everything was terrifyingly still and quiet. No one moved for a long moment, and it was Nanako who finally broke the lull.

"Theodore?" she called out. "Margaret? Elizabeth? Where did you go?"

There was no answer. Her words echoed harshly around the empty room.

"Oh," whispered Yukiko. "Nanako-chan, look…"

Yosuke followed Yukiko's pointing finger, and saw that there were now three columns standing in the room, stretching from the ground to the ceiling. They looked like they were made of some kind of stone, although it was so white and pristine that Yosuke couldn't imagine any real life rock managing to look quite like that.

Nanako moaned quietly to herself, and hurried forward to press her hands against one of the columns. Following quickly behind, Yosuke recognized that the statue carved into the column had Theodore's face.

"We seem to be in no more danger," remarked Naoto. "The walls are again intact. The room is no longer disintegrating. I believe that the crisis has been averted."

Nanako let out a strangled sob, drawing everyone's attention in her direction. She had run over to one of the other columns, and seen that this one was carved with Margaret's face. Yosuke could only assume that the third column would, of course, be Elizabeth.

"I'm sorry," wailed Nanako, wrapping her arms around the Margaret column and sniffling into it. "I didn't mean to…I didn't know…please come back. Please! That's what I want! You said you'd do what I wanted! Please!"

A lump lodged itself in Yosuke's throat. He hadn't liked Margaret, or Elizabeth, or Theodore. He'd found them all creepy, and for obvious reasons he'd never forgiven Elizabeth for what she'd done to his best friend, even if it was only in hopes of saving his newest partner. Still, Nanako's grief was so pure it was painful. For a girl her age, he thought, she'd already had too much to do with death.

Adachi, whom Yosuke had almost entirely forgotten in the midst of recent events, walked over and peeled Nanako off of the column. She clung to him, burying her face in his leg and crying. "Hey, it's not your fault," Adachi told her, looking more than a little bit out of his depth. "Don't' cry, okay? They did what they were supposed to do."

"I told them to," sniffled Nanako. "I made them do it…I…I hurt them…I'm a terrible person…"

"None of that," said Adachi, and there was an edge to his voice that made Yosuke suddenly put his hand to his weapon. "Listen, you're not a bad person, and you didn't hurt them. You think your dad would want to hear you talking like that? You didn't do anything wrong, okay? You were trying to help. Sometimes, things just happen. It was an accident. Do you understand?"

Slowly, Nanako nodded, her eyes wide. In her surprise at his unexpectedly adamant tone, she stopped crying.

"Okay," said Adachi. "Good. Come on, let's go find your Big Bro. He's probably waiting for you."

Without another look back, Adachi, with Nanako in tow, walked through the door and back into the Velvet Room.

"Uh, is he gonna…" began Kanji haltingly.

Yosuke shook his head. "I don't know, but we can't leave the two of them alone. Come on, quick!"

**Chapter Thirty**

**Author's Note: **Here we are, coming to the end. There's one more short chapter after this, and then an epilogue. Stay tuned to the Author's Notes for more news about future installments of this series!

Also, I've released the results of that poll I had posted on my profile, you can find them there. Seriously? Half of you? Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who was really intrigued by that pairing. Thanks for taking the time!

**Chapter Thirty**

Yosuke and the rest of the team hurried back into the Velvet Room, right on Adachi and Minako's heels. They arrived to find Nanako crying again, although with less desperate abandon than before, standing in front of Igor and recounting the story of what had happened with the shadow snake and the sacrifice of the three assistants.

"I'm sorry," she finished sadly, the tears dripping down her cheeks and falling with little inaudible splats to the floor. "It was an accident..."

Yosuke was still very aware of Adachi standing at Nanako's elbow. For all that he was concerned about his friend's little cousin, he didn't want to risk taking his eye off the criminal for even a moment. Sure, he'd 'helped them out' when they'd faced the snake shadow, but what had that meant? Really, thought Yosuke, what he and the others should have been doing was tackling Adachi to the ground and disabling him so that they could get him back to the prison. It still wasn't clear how he'd gotten out and over to the Velvet Room in the first place. Had he picked the lock on his cell, or had there been a TV left or wheeled too close to the bars? Nothing else seemed to make any sense.

"Can you get them back?" asked Nanako. "If you can, then I promise we'll work harder this time and we'll make sure that the shadow doesn't break the walls anymore. I understand now. I won't let them hut themselves again, I promise."

The hopeful look on Nanako's face forced Yosuke to look away. He could already tell by the set of Igor's jaw that there was no undoing what had been done, and he knew that, somewhere deep inside, Nanako probably knew it too. That was why she'd dissolved into such floods of tears. Hearing her pleading like this was a little too much for him to take.

"No," murmured Igor. "No, the choice is made and the flow of the future has already been set in motion. There is nothing, now to be done."

Peering hard into Igor's face, Yosuke suddenly wondered if he was sad, at all. He didn't look sad, or even angry, just…thoughtful, and stoic. Sure, he wasn't exactly smiling with glee, but there were no real signs that the loss of his three assistants meant anything specific to him. Come to think of it, thought Yosuke, what had they really been to each other? They had called him "Master," as though they'd been his slaves, but…had they been co-workers? Friends? They had spent every day together, for…maybe for eternity. What would happen, now? Somehow, the idea of Igor bursting into tears was so disturbing, that Yosuke was briefly glad that the man seemed to be as unemotional as ever. Maybe he was letting Nanako feel enough for both of them. Or maybe, honestly, he just didn't care. There were people and things in the world, Yosuke remembered, turning his attention back to Adachi, that didn't' have the full bent of human emotions.

"So?" asked Kanji, into the silence that fell after Igor spoke. "What now? What about Yu-senpai and Minako? Are they gonna be okay?"

Igor shrugged. "Things will return to normal," he informed them. "All will be well, of course, until new shadows emerge from the minds of your friends, and then the battle will begin anew. It is as we expected when we performed the resealing."

"So…we'll have to start all over," muttered Yosuke.

Igor nodded. "I believe," he remarked, "that when we offered you the choice whether or not to perform the resealing, it was you who said that you were willing to continue to the fight the shadows, no matter what the cost to your own person. Having made that decision, we expect you to abide by it."

"We?" asked Yukiko.

For just a moment, Igor's eyes widened slightly. "Ah," he murmured. "Yes. I expect you to abide by it. It is the rule."

There seemed to be nothing left to say after that. Slowly, reluctantly, the members of the investigation team started drifted into pairs or groups, and then moving towards the Velvet Room door. No one seemed to want to talk about what had just happened, or the trials that were, apparently still and eternally laid out ahead of them.

Just as Yosuke himself was getting ready to go back into the TV world, Igor stopped them all with a few words.

"There is," he said quietly, "just one more matter that remains to be dealt with."Everyone turned around to stare at him. "Nanako," he continued, "as the Wild Card, it is now your responsibility to create for me a new assistant. Without assistance, I am unable to perform the tasks necessary to provide you with persona skills and advancements.

"Huh?" asked Nanako in surprise. "But…how am I supposed to do that?"

"Can't we worry about this some other day, please?" asked Chie. "I can barely keep my eyes open…"

She wasn't the only one who was exhausted, Yosuke realized. He, too, was beginning to feel the deep aches in his muscles and bones, as well as the emotional exhaustion of having cycled through so many violent and panicky feelings in such a short space of time. Several of the team members, as well as Adachi were bleeding in multiple places, and Teddie was looking deflated and flattened.

"I fear that it is not a matter that can be put off so easily," murmured Igor firmly. "Before you leave this room today, the decision must be made."

Nanako shook her head and frowned. "But I can't make people," she reminded Igor. "I'm just a girl, I don't' have magical powers like you do. I'm just…." She paused for a moment, as her gaze fell on Adachi, who was now leaning against the wall a few feet away from her, apparently bored by the whole exchange.

"You can do it," she told him, pointing an accusing finger at him. "You can be the assistant."

Everyone stared at her, including Adachi. "Nanako-chan," began Naoto, "I do not think that it works quite that way."

"Yeah, obviously," agreed Yosuke. "Besides, you don't want that guy running around inside your head. We'd have twice as much work to do with all the shit he'd think up."

Nanako, however, was adamant. "No," she insisted, "it's a good idea. Adachi-san has to go back to jail when we go home. He's a criminal. Dad says criminals don't get better, and they don't learn how to not be criminals anymore, but…maybe it's because nobody ever lets them. If he stays in here, it'll be just like jail, only he'll be helping people. It's like a better prison, and maybe, in a better jail, he'll get better too."

That was, unfortunately, the stupidest thing that Yosuke had ever heard. Kids, he thought, trying not to roll his eyes at Nanako. What would she think up next?

"It's not…really that simple," he said, trying to think of how to explain it to Nanako, who, though still tearful, had a big smile on her face now, as though she had somehow managed to solve the problem of world peace all by herself.

Unexpectedly, Adachi laughed. "Why not?" he asked, shaking his head. "The kid's right. I'm not doing any good sitting on my ass in prison. You guys are just gonna drag me back there anyway, aren't you? Even if you don't, they'll catch me again. Dojima-san's annoyingly good at getting his man. Honestly, sticking around here sounds a lot more interesting. It's the craziest kind of community service I've ever heard of, but, hey, it's a crazy world."

"You'll do it?" asked Nanako hopefully.

Yosuke felt it was time to put a stop to this. "He can't do it. That won't work," he told her. "Right, Igor?"

Igor frowned. "I see no reason why not. He is a persona user, and does have the required abilities, although he will, of course, have to be trained…" Igor gave Adachi an appraising look, and Yosuke thought he detected just the slightest hint of distaste in Igor's eyes. "It will be, of course, as the guest wishes. Is this want you want, Nanako?"

"Yes," announced Nanako. "Yes, it is."

Adachi stepped forward in front of Igor, and held both wrists out in front of him, as though waiting to be handcuffed. Igor, apparently unimpressed by this sarcastic bravado, waved his hand, and a piece of paper fluttered down in front of Adachi.

"Sign here," Igor instructed him. "This is a contract committing you to service in this Velvet Room."

As Yosuke watched, hoping against all hope that the shadow snake might suddenly reappear and eat Adachi alive, Adachi reached forward, picked up the pen, and stared at it thoughtfully for a moment.

"After I sign this thing," he said, "I want to do something. I'm gonna need five minutes. Then I'll come back and I'll do all the slave shit you want, okay?"

Igor inclined his head in assent. Apparently satisfied with that, Adachi took the pen, and signed, quickly and carelessly, "Tohru Adachi."

Then he turned around, and walked through the door to the TV world.

Yosuke and Kanji immediately made as if to follow him out, but Igor shook his head at them. "Having once agreed to the contract, he cannot leave this world without the supervision of the Wild Card," he assured them. "Your friend will return."

The very use of the word "friend" to describe Adachi made Yosuke feel as though he wanted to throw up all over the immaculately clean Velvet Room floor.

**Moments later, outside the Velvet Room…**

Minako woke up to the beautiful, refreshing realization that the pain had stopped. She lay on the ground for a few moments, getting her bearings and forcing herself to remember what had happened and what she was doing on the floor in the first place.

"Oh god," she gasped out loud, as it all came flooding back. The others and Yu were probably still in terrible danger. Where were they? What was going on, and how long had she been passed out like this?

Then again, she reasoned, the headache was completely gone, and that meant something. She wasn't sure exactly what it meant, but hopefully it was something good. If her headache was gone, then was Yu, too, safe from the pain? Was it all over? What had happened to her friends?

Minako got to her feet, brushing herself off and feeling with her hands to try to find the wall that should have been a door to the Velvet Room. Instead of the wall, however, her seeking fingers found something that felt like a human being.

"Oh, good," said Tohru. "You're not dead. I guess you're good at following instructions. No wonder Dojima-san puts up with you."

"Tohru?" she asked, grabbing on to his arm. "What happened? Where is everyone? Is it over?"

"Yeah," he told her, "its over. Everyone's fine. They're all gonna come running out here gushing about how worried they were in, like, maybe ten seconds. That doesn't give me a lot of time." He sighed. "Shame, really. Oh, well."

"Time?" asked Minako. "Time for what?"

Instead of answering that, Tohru suddenly pulled her to him and kissed her, quickly and deeply. Stunned, Minako began to pull away, but Tohru's hand squeezed against the small of her back, and he broke the kiss to whisper against her cheek, "Aw, come on. I did what you wanted. I played the hero for you. Let me have this, okay?"

Slowly, Minako felt herself relax, and even let herself lean in to him a bit as she began, almost without realizing she was doing it, to return the kiss. The fingers of Tohru's free hand reached up to twine themselves through her hair, and she could feel his heart beating in time with her own as his breath rose and fell against her chest.

Then, something wet and sticky landed on her nose, and she pulled away to brush it off. "You're bleeding," she told him, reaching up to find the wound on his forehead that was the source of the blood.

"What?" asked Tohru breathlessly. "Oh…yeah. Jeez. Sorry." He laughed that same, nervous little laugh that she'd heard so many times before she'd been introduced to what he really was. "Wow, that's gross, uh…I just needed to know if you-!"

"Minako!" called Junpei from somewhere behind her. Minako heard footsteps coming towards them. Tohru released her with an exasperated little sigh.

"Well, this is it," he told her. "Here comes the cavalry. Goodbye, blind girl. It's been fun."

"Wait," she told him, but she could already hear him walking away. Then, Junpei's hands were on her shoulders, and there were bodies pressing all around her, reaching out to touch her and exclaiming at her excitedly.

"You're all right," said Junpei, and she could hear the glowing relief in his voice as he said it. "We were really worried…I thought we heard you scream, back there, when we were fighting off that snake thing, but…I don't know, maybe I imagined it. Anyway, you're safe, now."

"What about you?" asked Minako, remembering the blood she'd found on Tohru's face. "Are you hurt? What snake thing? Where's everybody else?"

"We're here," Yosuke told her. "Everybody made it."

"Yeah," agreed Chie, with only slightly less of her usual spunk. "There are cuts and bruises, sure, but we'll live to fight another day!"

Minako was so relieved she thought she might pass out again. She insisted on taking several minutes to go around and find each person, to check with them and make sure that they were all right. Only when she came to the last member of the group did she realize that something was missing.

"Where's Shinji?" she asked. "Junpei? Wasn't' Shinji with you?"

"Huh?" Junpei sounded surprised. "Yeah, he was just here a minute ago. He's the one that heard you scream back there, actually. I saw him walk out of the room just a few minutes before we did."

Minako's heart sank. "Excuse me," she murmured. "I think I…just a minute." Turning on her heel, she ran back in the direction of the exit from the TV world.

**Chapter Thirty One**

**Author's Note: **This chapter was hard for me to write. Unfortunately, early on in this story, I realized that I'd written myself into a corner, and that the way I was characterizing Shinjiro and Minako, there was no way I could make them work out as a couple. For some reason, I had created a relationship dynamic that was just not going to be successful. That was very frustrating, because then I had to go and re-plot the entire story…

Someday, perhaps even someday soon, I'll write a ShinjiroxMinako story that really gives them the opportunity and the space to fall back in love again. I loved them as a couple in the game, and I think it can definitely be done, but for the time being, I'm going to have to let them go, at least for now. Let's just hope I have better luck in my real life relationships than I do in creating fictional ones.

But, as I do love me some plot twists and angst, I don't' promise or commit to them being broken up forever.

And **I solemnly promise** that after this chapter, the breakups have finally ended. Now, and I mean this sincerely, it is time for me to start getting couples together. There are at least three that I will be focusing heavily on in future installments of this story, and they all get happy endings! So do not despair, I am capable of writing happy romance. I think.

**Chapter Thirty One**

"Shinji!" Minako cried, rushing forward so fast that she almost tripped over her own feet. "Shinji, wait! Listen, I can explain!" Uncertain that he was even still in the TV, Minako wasn't sure where to turn next, and was just beginning to seriously panic when she heard his voice off somewhere to her left.

"Forget it," he said. "You don't have to explain."

"Shinji!" Relief flooded her entire body as Minako walked over towards his voice. "I didn't mean for it to happen. He just came up and kissed me, and I didn't know what to do. I was confused, and… I didn't want to kiss him, I don't want anything to do with him. I'll never see him or go near him ever again, please. Don't be angry."

She reached out and found Shinjiro's hand, but when she tried to hold it in hers, it was cold and unresponsive to the touch. No, thought Minako. No, please, not now. This can't be happening now, after everything was finally over and things had a chance of being okay again.

"It doesn't matter," Shinjiro muttered. "It doesn't matter anymore. I get it, now."

Minako just stared at him. "Get what?" she asked. "No, you don't get it. You don't understand, I'm trying to tell you that-!"

"It was never about the shadows," said Shinji, a bit louder than Minako had been expecting. "I wanted it to be, but that didn't help." Pausing, he let out a deep breath. "I just wanted you. It didn't matter what else I had to do, as long as I could have you. I just…I wanted to protect you, to keep you close, but maybe I don't know what that means. I've never loved anybody before. I…I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

Minako didn't know what he was supposed to say either, but she knew what she wanted to hear him say. In lieu of anything else, she told him, sincerely, "I love you."

"I love you too," said Shinjiro. "So…I'm going back to Iwatodai."

Shaking her head violently, Minako felt herself beginning to cry. The stress and the strain of the day were beginning to take their toll on her, and she didn't have it in her to be stoic in the face of this sudden onslaught of feelings. "We can go back," she insisted. "We can start over, just the way you wanted. Now that everything's over, we can pick up where we left off at Gekkoukan again. There's still so much time."

"There was never enough time," muttered Shinjiro. "You're never gonna let me treat you the way I want. You're always so dead set on being on your own, doing everything yourself. It hurts me to watch you throw yourself into everything like that. You're gonna get yourself killed someday. I can't take that. I can't sleep at night. Honestly, I thought, maybe now that you were blind, now that you needed me…but it didn't make a difference."

"I don't want to hurt you," murmured Minako. "

If it wasn't him," continued Shinjiro, "It would have been somebody else. You're always restless when you're with me. Maybe that's why I never wanted to see you with any other guys. I knew you'd never really want to be my girl."

"I want to be your girl," Minako promised him. "I want another chance. Let me try. Please. You won't be sorry!"

Shinjiro sighed, and Minako could hear how tired he was. "I'm already sorry," he mumbled. Minako heard him walking away from her, and although she wanted to chase after him, for some reason her feet were rooted to the spot.

"If you want me," he told her over his shoulder, just before the sound of his footsteps disappeared entirely, "You know where I'll be. I told you before; there won't ever be anybody else for me. It'll always be you."

With that, he left her standing helplessly next to the entrance, letting herself cry.

"Minako?" asked Junpei, coming up behind her. "Hey, uh…here." He handed a crumpled pack of tissues to her over her shoulder.

"Did you hear everything?" asked Minako, sniffling.

"Yeah, pretty much," admitted Junpei. "If you want, I can go after him, and, you know, rough him up a bit for making a girl cry."

Minako just shook her head. There wasn't any point, she knew, in chasing after Shinjiro and sobbing that she was so, so sorry. He'd told her what she'd have to do if she wanted him back. Right now, all she could do was listen to him walk out of her life, and try to remember to exhale after inhaling.

She'd have to go home, now, she realized. At least, she would after stopping back at the police station to check on Yu. If she was fine, then she was sure that he, too, would be fine, although she'd definitely feel better about it after she'd seen him face to face. Dojima would be there as well, and there was definitely going to be a lot of explaining to do before any of them would be allowed to put this whole horrifying episode behind them.

Eventually, however, she would have to go home, and Shinjiro wouldn't be waiting for her when she got there. He wouldn't be cooking in the kitchen, or grumbling to himself while he tried to find something that he'd dropped back behind the stove. The next morning, when she got up to go to work, as though it was just another day, he wouldn't help her find a matching set of clothes. She would never have the chance to make him the breakfast that she'd failed to make the other day. It was too late now, she thought, to realize how much of her life he'd been a part of. It was too late to wish she'd let him love her the way he'd wanted to.

"Junpei?" she asked. "Can I come over tonight? Please?"

"Course," said Junpei. "I was gonna insist if you didn't ask."

**A few days later, at the Dojima residence…**

Somehow, Minako had made it to her seventeenth birthday.

The promised celebration was in full swing, with a cake prepared by a collusion of all the girls sitting and cooling on the kitchen table. There were only seven candles in it, or rather, there were six now that Teddie had decided to try to eat one, for reasons that were still a mystery to everyone else at the party. Minako could only assume that Yosuke had dared him to do it, although Yosuke was denying it to anyone and everyone who asked him.

Minako was doing her best to have a good time. After all, it was a birthday party that her new friends were throwing just for her, and that was definitely something to be appreciated and enjoyed. She knew that they were trying to make her feel especially loved, something that she needed and yet couldn't manage to let herself feel after her breakup with Shinjiro. The more the days went by, the more she missed just having him in the same room. It was funny how she'd never even thought about what being close to him meant to her while they'd been sharing a home.

Mitsuru, Fuuka, and Yukari had all taken the time to come down from their various places of school and work to visit Minako for her birthday. The three of them were currently hanging out on the sofa, admiring how talented Nanako was at getting all the answers correct on her favorite evening quiz show.

While Minako watched them from a safe distance, she heard a familiar set of wheels rolling towards her over the floor panels.

"You don't' look very happy," Yu observed, stopping his chair to sit next to her.

Minako sighed. "Yeah," she agreed. "I'm sorry. I'm just-!"

"You're just overwhelmed," interjected Yu. "I know. I know the feeling."

Minako wondered if he really did. If there was anyone in the room who understood what it was like to not be in control of his or her own emotions, then it was definitely Yu. Still, he hadn't just gotten dumped.

….and that, Minako reasoned with herself, was probably because Yu hadn't been caught making out with another woman in front of his girlfriend. There was really no way that Minako could manage to paint this as anything other than her own damn fault.

"Actually," said Yu, "it's happened before."

Minako opened her mouth to say something, but then wasn't sure exactly what to say in the first place. Was he reading her mind, now?

"It's all over your face," he informed her. "There's really only one thing you could be that miserable about."

"Please tell me," murmured Minako desperately, "that everyone doesn't' know why Shinjiro-!"

"Everybody doesn't know," Yu assured her. "I know. You told me that day at the station, remember?"

Minako breathed out a sigh of relief that she hadn't realized she'd been holding in. "Yosuke would kill me," she said. "He'd never speak to me again. It would be horrible."

"Yeah," agreed Yu, "it would be pretty bad. Good thing I'm not going to tell him. Besides, Yosuke cares about you, so eventually, he'd get over it. Maybe. It would take a long time."

Minako realized that she didn't want to think about it anymore. "You said 'it's happened before,'" she reminded him. "What's happened before?"

Yu paused for a moment before answering that question. "Rise never told you?" he asked. "That's surprising. I thought she'd told everyone. Maybe she's finally starting to get over it. Once, during the first year I spent in Inaba, Rise caught me kissing Yukiko at the shrine."

"So?" asked Minako.

"So," finished Yu, "that was only hours after I'd taken her on our third date to Okina City."

Minako found herself trying not to laugh. "I had no idea," she told him, "that you were such a lady's man. Shame on you! How could you? They're both such nice girls…I'm amazed that you're still all friends."

"It wasn't my best moment, I'll admit," agreed Yu. "Sometimes hormones can play interesting tricks on you."

"Yeah," muttered Minako. "Hormones and shadows."

"Does it really matter which one it is?" asked Yu. "In the end, the result in the same. Hormones will probably happen again. Unfortunately, so will shadows. We'll have to be ready, but we also have to make sure that we're ready to let go and move on. We can't face new things if we're still hung up on the old ones."

Minako smiled. "Was that supposed to be a pep talk?" she asked.

Taking her by the hand, Yu guided her past the sofa and over to the table where the cake was standing. "It was the truth," he informed her. "And it will still be the truth the next time something goes wrong, which it will. You know, they're waiting for you to cut the cake."

Seeing that she was standing next to the table, several of Minako's friends began whispering amongst themselves, and moving towards her, until she could feel the press of bodies and the eyes watching her expectantly from various corners of the room. Yu passed her the knife, and guided her hand to the place where he wanted her to cut. Carefully, Minako pressed the knife down, and felt it slide through layers of frosting and confection.

"Happy birthday, Minako," said Junpei, from somewhere by Minako's right hand.

"Yeah, happy birthday!" agreed Fuuka, who had come to stand by the table.

"Cake for everybody!" announced Chie enthusiastically.

As Yu and Minako handed cake around to all the guests, Minako took a deep, calming breath.

Yu was right, she thought. Unexpectedly, she was seventeen years old, and tomorrow would be another day.

"

**Epilogue**

**Author's Note: **Oh dear, please don't be so angry! Look! Here! I wrote something cute for you! Please don't hate me! Oh, there's another important A/N at the end, by the way.

**Epilogue**

One Saturday morning, when no one was paying any attention to what she was doing, Nanako went back to the Velvet Room.

Igor was there, in his usual spot, but this time, so was Adachi, sprawled out in the chair next to Igor, looking bored and generally disinterested in his surroundings. When Nanako walked in, he sat up. "Hey, Nanako-chan," he greeted her. "What's going on in the real world? Jeez, it feels like days since I've seen another human being…"

"Um, it has been days," Nanako informed him. "How are you, Adachi-san?"

"I'm uh…" Adachi glanced over at Igor, who appeared to be completely ignoring him. "I'm bored out of my skull," he told her, with an exasperated sigh. "Kinda figured there'd be more to do around here. You know, fighting off shadows and creating badass new personas…but, no, all I do is sit here and stare at the wall, hoping somebody might show up and put me out of my misery."

Nanako wasn't quite sure how to react to that. After all, it had been her decision to trap him here, and that was after he'd gone out of his way to help save her and her friends from that horrible snake shadow. Still…Dad had been very clear about the fact that criminals could not be allowed to run around in the streets. Otherwise, she knew, there wouldn't be jails in the first place. Besides, it didn't look so bad in here. There was definitely something missing, though…

"Hey," asked Adachi, breaking in on Nanako's thoughts. "What did you tell Dojima-san about me? I mean, I guess he asked when he saw that the cell was open and I was gone, right? So? What happened?"

"Oh," replied Nanako calmly, "We just told him that you were dead."

"Wha-?" Adachi blinked at her in surprise. "You, um…well, I guess that's one way to handle it. What did he, uh…say, when you told him that?"

Nanako frowned as she thought about that. "He asked a lot of questions," she said slowly. "He wanted to know how it happened, and what you were doing out of your cell, but Minako fixed everything. She explained that I was in danger, and that you had to come and save me, and that while you were saving me, something bad happened, and…" Nanako bit her lip. "I didn't' like lying to Dad," she admitted. "Lying isn't a good thing to do. It's a bad habit. Minako said that we had to, though. She said it would let Dad have a piece of his mind."

"A piece of his mind…?" Adachi rolled that around on his tongue or a moment. "You mean, it would give him 'peace of mind?'"

"Yeah," agreed Nanako. "That's what it was!" After a moment of thought, she added, "but, I don't think Minako was right. She said it would make Dad feel better, but he's sad sometimes, now. He comes home sighing a lot from work. Last night he was at the booze again…"

Adachi didn't seem to have anything to say to that. Nanako watched as Adachi opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, looking surprised and out of his depth.

"Can I go into that other room today?" asked Nanako, after waiting a few polite moments for Adachi to figure out what he wanted to say. "Are there any shadows?"

"Nope," muttered Adachi, slightly distracted. "The coast is clear. You want me to come in with you, just in case?"

"No thanks," Nanako assured him. "I'll be fine."

Leaving Igor and Adachi to their own devices, Nanako walked through what Yosuke had always called the "nightmare door," and soon found herself standing in the large room surrounded by the three columns. Sitting down on the floor in the center of the room, Nanako pulled a coloring book and a box of crayons out of her bag, and laid them out in front of her.

"Good morning!" she announced to the room at large. "I'm sorry that it's been so long since I was here. Chie and Kanji have been teaching me how to ride a bike without my training wheels, and yesterday morning I fell down and started bleeding from my nose, so Dad said I had to stay in all day and not go to school…"

As she talked, Nanako began using a bright blue crayon on a picture of a large butterfly, with its wings outspread. She did her best to stay within the lines, something that she was embarrassed to admit she sometimes had a hard time doing, even at her age, unless she really spent time focusing on the task at hand.

"Next week," she told the room, "I'll be going to the beach with Dad and Big Bro! It's almost the end of summer vacation, and Dad says that we should take a family trip before Big Bro has to go back to his parents in the city. I don't want him to go back at all…I wish he could stay with us forever. He promised me, though, that he'd be back in a few months to see the first snow of the year with me. Last year, the first snow wasn't very much fun…"

Nanako remembered that the first snow of the year before had happened on the same day that she'd found Yu cold in his bed. Deciding that she didn't want to think about that, she changed topics.

"I've got a new swimsuit for the beach," she announced. "It's green! Last year, my favorite color was pink, but this year I think I'm going to like green instead. Chie wears a lot of green, and she's so strong! I think I want to be more like her when I grow up. Yukiko's really pretty, though…do you think I could ever be pretty like that? Yukiko has a pink swimsuit, so maybe I should wear my old pink one instead…"

Having finally finished coloring the butterfly, Nanako carefully tore it out of the book, and pulled out a roll of tape from her bag. She tore off a small piece of tape, just the way Yu had shown her, and walked over to the column that had Theodore's face on it. Attaching the tape to the butterfly picture, she hung the picture up at the bottom of the column, just below the place where the face was visible.

"There," she said, stepping back to admire her work. "That looks a little better, doesn't it? It's too white in here. You need more color! Hmm, maybe I should make another one. Maybe I'll make a green one, and then a pink one. What do you think?"  
For a moment, there was no response. Just as Nanako headed back to begin work on a second picture, however, a little peal of feminine laughter echoed around the walls of the room, having come, apparently from nowhere at all.

Nanako smiled. "I thought you'd like that, Elizabeth," she said. "Which color do you want?"

**Author's Note: **And thus ends the second installment in what is rapidly becoming an epic-sized Persona series. I have enjoyed every second of writing this, and I sincerely hope you've' enjoyed reading it as well. If you didn't', at least you get to stop now! Phew! If you did, there's more where that came from, and please do read on for further details.

The story is now going to branch off into two separate stories, both of which will follow the same timeline, but feature different perspectives and events.

If you are interested in following the further adventures of the Investigation Team, and their mission to explore the Velvet Room and protect the minds of their friends, you'll want to read **Piecekeeping**, which will be told from Yosuke and Nanako's points of view. This story will feature all of the characters you've seen from me so far, but will focus the most heavily on Yosuke, Nanako, and Yu.

If you are interested in following the futher adventures of Minako in the Inaba police force, and her complicated and confusing relationship with Adachi, you'll want to read **Messiah**, which will be told from Minako and Adachi's points of view. Again, many of the characters you've seen so far will be featured, but it will focus the most heavily on Minako, Adachi, and Junpei (hooray Junpei!) We'll also see some more of the persona 3 cast come back in that one!

The stories will overlap and occasionally reference each other, but can be read separately! Of course, if you want to know the WHOLE story, you can always read them both. :D

Warning: **Piecekeeping** will be a much lighter, more adventure-style story involving multiple pairings and ABSOLUTELY NO BREAKUPS OR CHARACTER DEATHS. **Messiah** will be a darker, slightly angstier story dealing more heavily with the more difficult side of romance, among other things.

I will post the beginnings of both of these stories next week!

In the meantime, I have GOT to do some homework, oh dear…and it's all my own fault, too.

Thanks very much for reading, and I hope to see you again in a week!


	5. Unbound

**Workaholic**

**Author's Note: **For the record, I am NOT THAT OLD. All of you who have compared me to Dojima today, you crazy kids get off my damn lawn!

**Supernova23**, I am throwing down the gauntlet. I challenge you to a one-shot war!

This one is for you.

**Workaholic**

"Dojima-san," said Minako, coming up behind his desk with a fresh cup of coffee. "This is the last one."

"Huh?" mumbled Dojima, trying to get his eyes to focus as he stared blearily down at a set of reports that had been lying on his desk for the last twenty or thirty minutes. He'd been staring at the same word, in the same line for most of that time. For some reason, he just couldn't seem to focus long enough to actually read it…

"I said," repeated Minako, just a little bit louder, "that I am cutting you off."

That got Dojima's attention. Turning around to face her, he gave her the sort of glare that only a caffeine-addict with a short temper and a long night ahead of him can really give.

Unfortunately, as he realized only after he'd made the effort, the look was completely lost on Minako, who continued to stare just past his shoulder with a slightly tired but determined half-smile on her face.

"Don't be ridiculous," he muttered. "You don't get to give orders around here, that's my job."

"Really?" asked Minako. "Because as far as I am aware, sir, you hired me to help keep you on task and on schedule. It's my job to make sure that you, and subsequently this police department run as smoothly as possible, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Dojima grumbled. "So what?"

"So," continued Minako, "I'm afraid that I'm going to have to exercise my veto. If you have things your way, this will make it the second all-nighter you've pulled in a row, which does absolutely no good for your system, your health, or the Inaba police force."

Dojima took a furtive, relaxing sip of the coffee she'd brought him. "You don't get a veto," he informed her, glowering at the fingers of one hand, which had begun, unexpectedly, to twitch.

"I beg to differ, sir," retorted Minako. "If you can't think of your own health, at least think of Nanako."

Nanako, thought Dojima. He did feel a little pang of guilt when he remembered that it had been two nights since he'd bothered to even come home. Sure, Nanako was getting older now. Her cousin was there too, to make sure that she ate and got to bed and school on time. Still…she was his daughter, wasn't she? There was definitely supposed to be some responsibility that went along with that relationship, and possibly even some one-on-one human interaction.

"I'll see her tomorrow," said Dojima. "I can't give up on this tonight. We're never gonna catch this guy if we don't figure out what the pattern is. There's got to be something connecting the victims, something that I just haven't seen yet." Unfortunately, his body chose that moment to make him yawn. Inwardly cursing those treacherous physical reflexes, he shook himself, gulped some more coffee, and returned his attention, as best he could, to the papers in front of him.

"It's no good, Dojima-san," insisted Minako. "You're not going to get there just by trying to force yourself through it. You need some sleep."

What I need, thought Dojima, is some answers, or some hints, or some idea of where to even get started on this case. "You don't understand," he told her. "It's not something that I want to do; it's something that I have to do. It's my job. I don't get to just slack off whenever I start getting tired."

There were a few moments of silence, during which Dojima finally managed to finish reading the page. As he turned over to a new document, he heard Minako shuffle restlessly behind him.

"I do understand," she told him.

"Huh?" he asked.

"I do understand," she repeated. "I know what it's like to have people relying on you, to not get to make your own choices about where and when you get to do certain things. I…I've been there."

Dojima was surprised. For the second time since she'd begun working at the station, he looked at her and saw someone who wasn't a kid, wasn't a teenager, but was instead a grown woman with way more life experience behind her eyes than he ever cared to see in someone her age again. It sent a little shiver down his spine when he saw the way she stared sightlessly into something just behind him, as though she was thinking about responsibilities she'd never completed, or things she'd never accomplished, with disastrous results.

"Just another few hours," he told her, softening slightly in the face of that expression. "I'll try to be home before Nanako wakes up in the morning, okay? Just…just don't cut off the coffee."

Unexpectedly, Minako nodded. "All right," she agreed. "Deal." Then, pulling up a chair, she sat down next to him. "It might help if you talked it through," she added. "Maybe I'm not much of a detective, but I make a great sounding board."

"Heh." Dojima shrugged. "Well, who knows? Maybe that's worth a try." Turning around in his chair, he took a deep breath.

**I Am in Blood**

**Author's Note:** This is one of the many things that happened while I was trying to stop rewriting **Bondswoman**, Chapter Nine. I guess it's a character study. This takes place during the time in which Dojima and Nanako are still in the hospital. For those of you who have Golden, and have played through Adachi's social link, it's right after he tells Yu he'll stay with Dojima for the night.

**I Am in Blood**

The monitors and machinery in Ryotaro Dojima's hospital room beeped their incessant, monotonous cacophony. In his chair by the bedside, Tohru Adachi closed his eyes and held his head. He hadn't slept properly in weeks.

Although Adachi couldn't say for sure, it had probably already been hours since Yu and his friends had left the hospital. The one small window in the room showed him that night had already fallen, and it was time for him, too, to start heading for home.

"Hang in there, Dojima-san." Knowing that the sleeping detective couldn't hear him, Adachi gave him a reassuring clap on the shoulder, something he probably would never have dared do if his partner was awake. Dojima stirred slightly in his sleep, and Adachi pulled his hand away quickly, worried that he might have woken the other man up after all.

He'd probably just shout at me, he thought wryly. He'd say something about going home and minding my own business, or about how I should be on the murderer's trail, instead of slacking off here at the hospital. It would never occur to him to say thank you, for talking to the nurses, checking up on Nanako, or looking after Yu. "Thank you," didn't seem to be in Dojima's vocabulary.

_And that,_ said the ugly, unwelcome little thoughts in the back of Adachi's sleep-deprived mind, _is why you want to do it. Now, while you're alone, while there are no witnesses._

Only a few minutes ago, the nurse had come in wheeling a portable TV set, apparently for Dojima's benefit during his stay. Adachi knew that Dojima wouldn't even turn the thing on. He was too preoccupied with worry about Nanako. He wouldn't even want to watch the news. For once, nothing happening in the rest of the world would matter to him at all.

The TV screen was larger than the usual mounted ones, and was probably big enough to fit a grown man's head and shoulders. All Adachi would have to do would be to wheel the TV over, prop Dojima up, and just push him right through the…

"No," muttered Adachi aloud. "No, that's crazy. He's my partner. I don't want to hurt him. Sure, he's a pain in the ass sometimes, and he treats me like a kid, but…"

_But you do want to,_ came the ugly thoughts. _Think of how much easier it would be if he just went away. Then you'd be in charge. You could pick a new partner, someone who would pay attention to you, someone who would take your work seriously._

"I don't," insisted Adachi frantically. "I don't want that. The guy invites me over for dinner three nights out of the week. Last week he gave me first pick of this really expensive sushi. And Nanako-chan…" He realized he was talking to himself in a room with a sleeping man, and stopped, laughing a little bit nervously at his own behavior. "I…think I'm going crazy," he mumbled. "Great. Just great."

Thinking of Nanako-chan made him remember something, and he reached into the pocket of his jacket to pull out a torn, crumpled piece of crayon-colored paper. When he unwrapped it, or at least, most of it, it turned out to be what was left over of a picture that Nanako had drawn of Dojima and Adachi, with a little yellow sun and what was probably a snow-covered tree in the background.

"I don't want to do this anymore," whispered Adachi, to Dojima, to himself, and to no one.

**Partners**

**Author's Note: **It is after 2:00 in the morning, and no matter how hard I try, I can't sleep. This is very bad, because I have to be awake again for work in four hours, and I am performing tomorrow night, so a night of no sleep is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.

I've given myself the next forty five minutes to free write. I am hoping that will help me fall asleep again. Let's see what happens if I just start typing!

**Partners**

Some days, it was hard for Ryotaro Dojima to watch the two of them together.

His nephew, Yu Narukami, had made a series of fast friends in what seemed like mere moments after he'd arrived in Inaba. One of those friends, perhaps his very best friend, was Yosuke Hanamura, the boy who Dojima knew belonged to the family who ran the Junes shopping center that was the controversial talk of the dying Inaba shopping district. Hanamura was, of course, your typical obnoxiously charming teenage kid, and Dojima hadn't really ever paid him much attention before. It was only after he'd heard the two of them talking together in Yu's room that he'd started to think about the pair of them in earnest. Hanamura had said something in particular, something unusual that sent an unexpected little chill down Dojima's spine.

_Hey, we're partners now, right? So don't worry, I've got your back._

Hanamura had called him and Yu "partners," although Dojima had to admit that he wasn't sure exactly what sort of crime the two of them were 'partners' in. No doubt it was some sort of bizarre teenage slang, one of the various words that kids these days came up with, used, and threw away again without so much as a second thought. It shouldn't have bothered him, but…somehow, for the next few days, he couldn't shake the feeling of dread that he got every time he found himself picturing Yu and Hanamura together, arms around each other, talking in hushed and confidential tones about something that Dojima probably didn't even need to understand. It reminded him all too well of another time, another place, and another person who had once pronounced the word "partner" with the same glib, easy assurance. It had meant something then, too, although even now Dojima wasn't entirely sure what that had been.

Tohru Adachi had been younger than Dojima, essentially a kid as far as the older detective had been concerned. When the higher ups had transferred Adachi to Inaba, and assigned him as Dojima's new partner, Dojima hadn't been too happy at first. No, that wasn't fair. He hadn't just been unhappy, he'd been livid. What business did this kid have taking on serious crime? Maybe once, before the murders began, it would have made sense to let Dojima train a rookie cop like this, but now that there was a legitimate case to consider, it was unthinkable that he had to waste his time keeping track of a lazy, good for nothing youngster who spent most of his time avoiding work and hanging out looking bored around the Junes food court.

It wasn't until he'd taken pity on Adachi, and invited him home for dinner one night that Dojima had discovered, to his surprise, and partially against his will that he actually sort of liked his new partner. Sure, Adachi was a pain in the ass, a difficult to train and constantly making mistakes that were even stupider than the ones he'd made the day before, but…he was a nice guy. He got along with Nanako, even helping her, as she told him one night when he finally got home from work, with her homework. He'd drawn a little flower on her completed book report assignment, which she was proudly showing off to everyone who would be willing to look. When they went out together after work, Adachi never drank. Instead, he waited for Dojima to get unreasonably drunk and then always helped him to stumble back home again. That was a new feeling for Dojima. Since Chisato had died, he'd never had someone in his life who he felt might be taking the time to look out for him. Once he'd been alone with Nanako, it had always been the other way around. He was the authority figure; he had to be the bigger man. It wasn't fair to expect any give and take. He had to look out for the people he loved, without much time allotted to give any thought to himself.

Tohru Adachi had changed that a little bit. Sure, Dojima still had to chase him around and try to force him to get his goddamn job done, but at the end of the day, it had been Adachi making sure that Dojima went home and got dinner, or a good night's sleep, or both. Against his will, against his better, reasoned judgment, Dojima had enjoyed the feeling of knowing that someone else had his back, and he redoubled his efforts to keep Adachi out of trouble, promising the younger man that if he only stuck with it and worked hard, he'd advance and get some real recognition sooner or later. He'd wanted to Adachi to succeed. That, he assumed, was what the word 'partners' meant, and he'd been beginning to revel in the possibilities of what might have almost been a friendship when the blow had finally fallen.

Nobody had seen it coming. Dojima still cursed himself and lost sleep at night over the fact that he, who had been closest to the situation, hadn't managed to figure out what was going on before so many lives had been put at risk. He'd been blinded, he knew, blinded by the fact that he wanted Adachi to be the man that he'd always appeared to be, the bumbling, confused, good-hearted rookie detective that Dojima had almost begun to trust as a member of the broken family he'd worked so hard to construct. Maybe, he'd thought to himself so many times, maybe if he hadn't been so blinded by the word 'partner,' he would have realized the truth much sooner. After all, it was his job to dismiss biases and to look at situations for what they really were. Why, in this case, had it been so hard?

In the end, Adachi had gone to prison, and it had looked as though they were going to assign Dojima a new partner. This time, however, he'd refused. He'd made the case that he was better off working alone, that having to watch someone else's back all the time took him away from the important jobs that he, as an experienced detective, should really be doing. The higher ups had argued, and he'd cajoled, and eventually everyone had gotten what they wanted. The case had been closed, and no one had forced Dojima to take on a new partner. He was permitted, from then on, to work alone.

At least, he was sure that was the best way, the way that things really needed to be, until he heard Hanamura and Yu confiding in each other that night.

_Hey, we're partners now, right? So don't worry, I've got your back._

Now, whenever he saw the two of them together, all he managed to feel was the uncomfortable emptiness of knowing that nothing was ever as sweet and simple as it seemed.

**Author's Note: **Well, that was interesting. I'm going to try to go back to sleep now. I certainly hope this document doesn't have too many typos.

**Pianissimo**

**Author's Note: **What is this? I don't' know what this is. I guess it is more of Adachi's back story, as I try to help myself understand a character that I am dealing with so heavily in **Bondswoman**. This one's very different though. It's long before he went crazy.

I guess the idea came from Adachi's social link, during which you learn that he is "good with his hands," likes magic tricks, and had parents who were obsessive about education. I've been dealing with his crazy, sexually driven side so much in **Bondswoman** that I wanted to show something else. I think this is a legitimate side of his personality as well.

Special thanks for this one goes to **Yuruya** for encouraging me and being extra supportive, and to **Flowerchild777** for telling me that I don't suck nearly as much as I think I do at portraying this character.

**Pianissimo**

Adachi had been seven years old when his parents had started his piano lessons.

"Tohru," his mother had told him imperiously, looming over him as he tried desperately to hide his toys behind his back, "a certain musical aptitude is a necessary part of a well-rounded educational experience for a young man who is destined for a bright and promising future."

"Trust me," his father had said, with a wink that had made him just a little bit uncomfortable. "It'll help you get all the girls when you're older. Girls love a man who's good with his hands."

At seven years old, Adachi hadn't been particularly interested in either his bright future or his luck with women, but, because his parents had insisted, he had dutifully practiced on the piano keys every night of the week for nine years, until his mother was finally able to tell all of her discerningly artistic friends that her son was, no doubt, the successor to Mozart or Takemitsu.

Although his technique improved, and he was soon dazzling the audiences at all of his school recitals, he had none of the promised success with women until, at the age of twenty one, his mother had asked him to play a piece to entertain the guests at a family party. He might have refused her if it hadn't been for the young, attractive brunette who was sitting at the back of the room, apparently some distant relation of his through the marriage of one of his mother's cousins. She was a couple of years younger than him, and he'd never really taken the time to notice her before, but now, it was all he could do to focus on the sheet music and force himself not to keep turning to glance at her over his shoulder, to see whether or not she was smiling while he played.

"What's your name?" he asked her, when his mother had finally left him alone to go and attend to her various social duties.

""I'm Hinata," she told him. "I love your music. It's beautiful, the way you play. Like your fingers are dancing."

After that, Adachi had spent at least an hour every day agonizing over the piano. He didn't particularly enjoy playing, or have any reason to try and impress his mother, now that he was out of college and living on his own dime. Still, as long as he would play for her, Hinata would come and listen, and long as she listened, she'd stick around and keep him company.

He'd played for her the day he'd made her dinner for the first time. The dinner had been a catastrophe, and eventually they'd ordered takeout in defeat, but the music had at least partially made up for the embarrassment of that little episode. She'd laughed and told him not to worry, that as long as he was good at something, he didn't have to be good at everything. Adachi had liked that. The idea of being so good at something that it made up for everything else appealed to him. He felt as though he'd found a niche.

He had played for her when he'd asked her to marry him, on a very cold day in February when they'd been stuck inside because of an unexpected snowfall. His heat wasn't working because he hadn't been able to pay the bill on time, so instead they wrapped blankets around each other and he played the piano to try and take her mind off of the weather. He'd been planning for months to pop the question, and when he finally did, he was so nervous that he dropped the ring and it fell into one of the cracks in the floorboards. It took hours and three different coat hangers to fish it out, but Hinata just laughed while she got down on her hands and knees to help him, telling him that he could make it up to her by playing her a beautiful love song.

Things had started looking up after that. He'd been offered a job by the police department, and for the first time since he'd moved out of his wealthy parents' home, there had been enough money for three meals a day and to consistently pay the heating bill. He'd even picked up a side job doing magic tricks at a local bar, something he'd unexpectedly discovered that he was good at one morning when he'd been trying to cheer Hinata up after she'd fought with a friend of hers from work. She'd encouraged him to see if he could make something out of it, and before long, he had a pretty popular, if small local act.

It hadn't been until a few months before the wedding was scheduled to take place that Hinata had broken down at the breakfast table, sobbing and repeating over and over that she wished she'd told him before, that she was sorry, and that she'd never meant for it to work out this way. Apparently, there was another man, an American businessman with an impressive family fortune and his face plastered all over the papers above headlines about his up-and-coming success story.

"But what did you expect, Tohru?" she'd asked accusingly, around her floods of tears."You're a cop, a magician, a piano player…you're so sweet, but you can't offer me anything to start a family with. How are we supposed to start a life together w hen you can't even figure out how to have one for yourself? I need a man who can provide, a man who has what it takes. All you have are talents, but they're no real use!"

He hadn't asked her to stay. Several years later, she'd called him on the phone to tell him that she'd heard about his transfer, and that she and her husband of three years wished him well in his new life in Inaba. By then, Adachi didn't care anymore. There was nothing she could say. There was nothing anyone could say. He understood, now, something that he'd never been allowed to understand when he was a child, and had never bothered to understand during the few happy years that he'd spent playing piano for Hinata in the kitchen.

He wasn't good enough. In the end, though, neither was she. They had both turned out to be worthless.

**Humans and Demons**

**Author's Note: **So, this evening, I am miserable. It has been a horrible, sad week full of unpleasant, disappointing things. I tried calling my boyfriend, but he's unavailable. I tried talking to my best friend, but she's military, and tears make her uncomfortable. Even calling my mom is out of the question at this time of night. Finally, I realized. There is one surefire way to get me out of this funk – I must write about someone who is even more mopey and pathetic than I am. Time for some Adachi x Minako!

So, if we're looking at the timeline of my stories, this story takes place directly after chapter 22 of **Bondswoman**. I know from the poll that I posted today that at least a couple of my favorite readers are intrigued by this pairing, so I'll post this story and see what happens.

WARNING: Offensive language, misogyny.

**Humans and Demons**

It was nearly 2 AM, and all of the lights in the Inaba police station were out, save for the one attached to the flashlight held by the unreasonably tall security guard standing just a few feet in front of Tohru Adachi's cell. Adachi himself, slumped down on the floor with his wrists aching dully from the continued pressure of Detective Dojima's personal handcuffs, loathed that particular security guard. He hadn't spent much time noticing or caring about any of the others. They were just poor stiffs doing their job like everybody else, nobody worth paying attention to. There was something special about this one, though. There was something special he had, that Adachi wanted.

"Hey," he called out. "Hey, you. Guard."

The security guard didn't even look in his direction.

"That blind girl who works for Dojima-san. You're sleeping with her, right?"

This time, the guard started, and turned to stare in at Adachi. "What did you say?" he asked.

"I asked you," repeated Adachi, "if you are screwing the blind girl who works at the desk behind the-!"

Suddenly, the security guard was very close to Adachi's face, and Adachi could feel his hot, angry breath beating down on him through the bars. "Shut up," he growled menacingly. "Shut the hell up about her." Adachi found himself wondering just how much this brand new security guard was devoted to his job. Was he so devoted that he'd pass up the chance to beat the crap out of Adachi for talking like that about his girlfriend?

"She's pretty cute, huh?" pushed Adachi recklessly. "A little younger than you, though. I guess it's probably nice, being with a younger girl. I mean, hey, you're lucky. I'm jealous. If I had a girl like that, I'd be all over-!"

"She's better than you'll ever get," muttered the guard, turning away. Adachi was disappointed. Was that all?

"Hey," he said again, trying to recapture the guard's attention. The guard, however, didn't even seem to notice. He was staring over towards the station doors, apparently having either lost or rejected any interest he'd previously had in the prisoner. Dejectedly, Adachi sighed and stretched out on the floor of his cell. There was no fun, apparently, to be had tonight. He might as well just get some sleep.

The guard had been right, he thought, as he closed his eyes and willed himself to drift off. She was, after all, too good for him, definitely better than he could ever deserve. Maybe it was because she was so young that she was still good enough to be better than him. After all, so many older women tended to be jaded, or catty, running around and sleeping with anything that would smile or throw a few dollars or cheap presents in their direction.

He'd seen it all before, too many times to bother thinking about. After all, being a policeman let him into some of the most broken homes of families gone horribly, almost hilariously wrong. This woman had cheated on her husband, and then run off with her new man and all of her husband's money. That woman had murdered her husband after marrying him, only so that she could get his money in the first place. The worst women, the ones that made even Adachi a little bit sick to his hardened stomach, were the ones that didn't' cry. Their husbands or lovers would get murdered or killed in some bar fight, and when Adachi went to interview them, or to pass along the bad news, they never batted an eyelash or seemed to care at all about the deaths of these guys they'd spent so much time and effort pretending to love.

Adachi's mother hadn't cried when his father passed away. He had cried, even though he knew that crying wasn't something a fourteen year old man was ever supposed to let himself do. His grandmother and grandfather had cried, but his mother had just sat there with this blank, stoic look in her eyes as though all the effort in the world couldn't make one tiny tear fall out of her stupid face. Adachi had hated her then. He hated her less, now, having seen so many women who did the same damn thing, or worse. Maybe it hadn't been his mother's fault. Maybe that was just the way that women were, deep down inside.

Even as he worked himself through those all too familiar thoughts, however, Minako's face popped back up in Adachi's head. She, at least, was something special, something unexpected. She had this tiny face that was so expressive, it painted a perfect guileless picture of exactly what dumbass thoughts were going through her crazy, naïve little mind. The way she laughed, the way she talked, the way she shouted at him through the cell bars, it was all so sincere that Adachi could see it hurting behind her sightless eyes. It was a shame, he decided idly, that she couldn't see. Maybe if she'd ever gotten a chance to look at herself in the mirror, she'd have learned how to fix her face a little bit, so not everything showed so obviously. She'd never get anywhere in life being so damn honest all over her face like that.

"Damnit," he muttered, shifting over and curling up on the cold floor. He'd promised himself to stop thinking about her.

"Huh?" asked the guard. "Did you say something?"

Adachi considered taunting him again, now that he had his attention. Somehow, he didn't feel much like doing it anymore. "Nah," he said. "Nothing."

The guard went back to whatever pointless vigilance he was keeping, and Adachi went back to trying not to think about Minako. She had gotten so angry that day, when he'd started teasing her about cheating on her boyfriend. He'd been angry too, then, after seeing the way that she'd cuddled up to the guy after having come on so strongly and obviously to him. Something about her had been broken for him, then, when he'd thought she was just like all the others. The pedestal that he'd unconsciously been keeping her on had buckled under her, and it had hurt him more than her when she'd come crashing from that height to the ground.

Still, when she'd denied it, when she'd insisted that she never meant to betray anyone, but that she'd made a mistake, one that she'd regretted moments later, there had been that look on her face that Adachi couldn't deny. It had been the truth. It was always the truth, with her.

"I wanted to," she'd told him, and that, too, was the truth. It had to be. That was what had kept him spinning around in his head all day, and what was keeping him from falling asleep now. It wasn't the cold floor, or the flashlight beam, or the eerie soundlessness of the holding cell. Again, and always, it was Minako. "I still want-!" she'd begun, and then she'd cut herself off, embarrassed and furious. Adachi was killing himself to know what the rest of that sentence might have been. It didn't matter, of course. What she still wanted wouldn't make a difference now, and never could again. Still, hope was a demon unlike any other that Adachi had faced, and he'd faced his fair share of horrible demons over the last two year period. Unlike all of the others, hope was incorruptible, unshakeable, and couldn't be shouted down or forced out to make room for despair or the cold, hard facts.

Hope was the monster that had pushed him out onto the flood plain at 4 AM, clutching an ice cream cone and a bouquet of pink flowers like some idiotic sap. He'd felt stupid and vulnerable standing there, not even sure if she was going to show up, getting cold in a clean shirt and brand new tie that he'd only bothered to buy because she'd giggled and called him a "snappy dresser." She'd spawned that hope when she'd told him to just "ask her out like a normal person." For some reason, despite everything he knew to be true, Adachi had reacted to that just like any other man would have done, as though he could have a chance to be any other man. She'd held that possibility out for him, dangling the chance of real, tantalizingly human affection in front of him like a slab of meat in front of a starving man. He wanted her, craved just to have her look at him like that again, the way she'd looked at him when she'd promised him that she could prove that, after all, he was really human.

Belatedly, and somewhat perversely, Adachi wondered if he would ever be able to get her that ice cream. After all, she'd won the game. She'd proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that even he was a human being. After all, even if he couldn't believe it and didn't deserve it, only humans were really capable of hope. Now that he'd found that part of himself, he might be stuck with it for the rest of his life. What would he do if that happened? He was already turning into something out of his nightmares, a useless, idealistic sack of shit, hung up on someone he'd never be able to touch again. It was horrifying. It was also wonderful. That, in itself, was just plain scary.

"Jeez," he muttered under his breath. "Thanks for nothing, blind girl."

**Author's Note: **Oh, wow, I…actually feel a lot better. Maybe I should make more of a habit of these ill-advised midnight writing sprees. Thanks for taking the time to read!

**We Can Work it Out**

**Author's Note: **Didn't sleep. Homeworked instead. Desperate to take a break from writing this infernal paper, I stopped to write a one-shot. Unfortunately, now I have to go back to work. Alas, alack.

This one is for **Meia42**, for all the excellent and helpful conversations that we have had, and for reminding me that the P3 characters need some love, too.

If you're looking at the timeline, this little story takes place directly after the end of **Bondswoman.**

**We Can Work It Out**

Minako still wasn't quite sure how Chie had talked her into this.

The morning after her birthday party, stuffed full of cake and sparkling apple cider, she'd woken up on the floor of the Dojima residence to meet the stern and disapproving gaze of her boss, Ryotaro Dojima, who had been sitting in the kitchen glowering at her and the rest of her passed-out friends for the past hour and a half.

It was obvious immediately that something was wrong.

"Hey," she'd heard Junpei whisper to Rise, from where they lay somewhat awkwardly entangled next to the sofa. "Weren't you the one who asked Dojima-san if it was okay for us to use his place last night?"

"Oooh…" Rise had murmured. "Um…well…I think I forgot…"

Minako had gotten off of the floor so fast that she'd smacked right into the base of the sofa and had left the house half-hopping on one foot, cursing her painfully stubbed toe.

Then, reluctantly, she'd gone back in to help Yu, Yosuke, and Nanako clean up the piles of mess.

While they'd been throwing empty cups and leftover cake plates into a big black trash bag, Chie had sighed, stretched her arms over her head, and remarked, "I ate sooo much last night…I feel kinda heavy. Hey, Minako, let's go for a run. We can have an all-girls workout day! That'll take your mind off of Shinjiro-san, right? It's perfect!"

Minako, who had actually been managing not to think about Shinjiro until Chie had brought it up, sighed. "No thanks," she muttered. "I don't think I'm really up for-!"

"Oh, that's not a bad idea," Yukari had interjected, before Minako had gotten to finish her sentence. "I wouldn't mind getting a little bit of exercise. I mean, I think I might be starting to put on a little bit of weight…"

"I'm sure you look fine," Minako had insisted.

Yukari had just sighed. "No offense," she told Minako, "but you're not exactly the right person to ask…"

In the end, several of the girls had decided to go. While Yukiko and Rise had stuck around to hang out with Nanako and the boys, Yukari, Mitsuru, Fuuka, and Chie had all insisted on dragging Minako out to the floodplain to go for what Chie insisted would be a nice, relaxing jog.

Now, running full tilt, panting and straining just to keep up, Minako had to admit that Chie had been right. This was definitely taking her mind off of Shinjiro. She was struggling just to remember to breathe.

"So," asked Yukari, her breath coming out in labored little gasps as she and Minako ran along side by side. "Are you gonna tell me what happened?"

"Yes," agreed Mitsuru, who, for some reason, seemed totally unruffled by the breakneck pace. "I confess that I have been curious about just what went wrong between you two. After all, when we left you both here after the resealing, it did seem as though you were getting along very well."

Minako frowned. Mitsuru, she realized, would of course have been very interested in exactly how well she and Shinjiro were getting along. After all, as long as Minako was spending time with Shinjiro, she'd be leaving Akihiko alone. Now that things were over between Minako and Shinjiro, however, Minako could only assume that Mitsuru would be worried that she'd start pursuing Akihiko again. Hadn't Junpei said, just the other night, that Minako was the sort of girl who'd go for any kind of guy? And, of course, a girl like Minako, who would date just anything, would probably never let herself stay single for long.

"Hey, guys? Maybe we shouldn't ask," Fuuka was saying, sounding uncertain. "I mean, Minako's probably had a really hard time over the last few days. The last thing she needs is all these questions, I'm sure."

Thank god, thought Minako, for gentle, understanding Fuuka.

They ran on for a few minutes in silence, save for the rasping and the panting, and the pounding of their feet against the ground.

Eventually, though, Yukari couldn't seem to keep it in anymore. "I'm worried about you," she insisted. "It's not that I'm trying to pry, or anything, I just wish I knew what to say. It's hard to figure out how to make someone feel better if you don't even know what happened in the first place!"

"Don't…want to feel better," muttered Minako, wondering if that nasty little twinge in her chest was something she should be seriously worried about. Where exactly was the heart? Or was that pain more likely to be in her lungs? "Just…want to forget about it."

"That doesn't sound very wise," murmured Mitsuru. "It is almost impossible to get over someone if you're unable even to think about them."

"Look," began Minako haltingly. "I really appreciate you guys coming down here, I really do…it's just that I wasn't really expecting this to turn into some kind of pity…oof!"

Focusing too hard on the conversation, Minako forgot to pay attention to where she was putting her feet, and managed to trip over something that may or may not have been a rock. She hoped it had been a rock, and not a turtle, or a piece of poorly-placed road pizza.

Whatever the mysterious object had been, it sent Minako crashing to the ground. She managed to catch herself on her hands and knees, and sat there in the dirt for a moment, with her back awkwardly hunched, just letting herself continue to breathe.

"Hey, Minako? Whoa, ow, that looks bad! Are you okay? "Chie came running over to her. "You should have said something if you were getting tired."

Minako tried hard to glare in Chie's direction. How, s he wondered, could anyone not start getting tired after a race like that? The boys weren't kidding when they said that Chie really gave them a run for their money.

"I think it's time to take a break," announced Fuuka. Minako heard the other girl settle down beside her. "I'm exhausted. Wow, Chie, you're so strong!"

"Agreed," murmured Mitsuru, joining the others. "Your stamina is impressive. Magnifique. Out of curiosity, what are you thinking of doing after you graduate from university? I might have an excellent job for you…"

Before long, all five women were sitting on the side of the road and chatting idly amongst themselves. This, at least, thought Minako, was genuinely sort of relaxing. It had been a very long time since she'd just sat and talked with her girlfriends like this. Everything lately had just started happening so quickly, there hadn't been any time at all to catch her breath, whether literally or figuratively. The last time she'd been down here, in fact, she'd been looking for Tohru.

Just thinking about Tohru sent a flood of negative feelings through Minako's mind. She was angry, frustrated, guilty and disappointed all at the same time. If she really tried, she knew, she could paint it as though it was Tohru's fault that Shinjiro had left her. After all, it had been Tohru who had decided to just walk up and kiss her like that, with no warning, out of nowhere.

But, she reasoned with herself, she could have said no. She hadn't even really wanted to. There was no way around that fact.

"Hello? Minako? Are you listening to me?" Yukari's voice cut through Minako's self-deprecating reverie. "I was saying that I think we should go and get some lunch, soon. Chie says there's this fantastic steak place just around the corner from here, in the shopping district. What do you think? I mean, steak seems kind of a weird thing to eat right after we've put all this effort into burning calories…"

Minako, still fixated on her own thoughts, shook her head. "No, I'm not hungry," she said. Then, following the train of the conversation she'd been having with herself, she asked, "Yukari? Can I ask you a weird question?"

"Um…sure." Yukari sounded surprised. "I guess so. What's up?"

Minako decided to go for broke. "Have you ever cheated on anyone?" she asked.

There was a long, contemplative silence. Minako, her face flushing with embarrassment, could just imagine the looks being exchanged between the former members of SEES. Chie had already known, of course, that there was someone else in the picture. Minako had told her, Rise, and Yukiko all about it during their little shopping trip to Okian. Yukari, Mitsuru, and Fuuka, however, would be hearing about this for the first time, and they were personal friends of Shinjiro's. Maybe, thought Minako, she should have just kept her mouths hut after all.

"No," said Yukari slowly after a moment. "I…don't' think I have. Um, is that why you and Shinjiro…? Did he cheat on you with somebody else?"

Minako started. "What?" she asked. "No, no, that's not what I meant. He didn't…he would never do something like that."

"Oh, right." Yukari sounded relieved. "Yeah, I did think that would be pretty strange."

"It was me," continued Minako. "I was the one who cheated."

Again, the silence stretched out for several uncomfortable moments.

Finally, it was Fuuka who spoke up. "Would you like to talk about it?" she asked kindly.

Until this moment, Minako had not wanted to talk about it. There had been very little in the world that she had wanted to talk about less. It wasn't as though telling anyone was going to change what had happened, or make her feel any less like a horrible person.

Still, Mitsuru had been right when she'd said only minutes before that it was important to learn to be able to talk about things. There wouldn't be any closure until she could manage to voice all of this stuff out loud.

"Yeah," said Minako. "I think I would like to tell you. But…you have to promise not to get angry or to shout at me until you've heard the whole story, okay?"

Slowly, and somewhat uncertainly, Minako began to regale her SEES friends with the events that had taken place between her and Tohru Adachi. Conscious of Chie's presence, Minako was careful to avoid any mention of events that might give away Tohru's actual identity, unsure if Chie would ever speak to her again if she found out who Minako's mystery man really was.

"And then he saw me with this other guy," she finished, "just after the final battle. I wanted to tell him before that, but…he insisted that he didn't want to hear about it."

"Hmm," murmured Mitsuru thoughtfully. "It sounds to me as though Shinjiro already knew about what had taken place between you and this older man. Otherwise, why would he have rejected you so strongly when you tried to tell him the truth?"

"Wow, he must have been scared," agreed Fuuka. "That's so strange, thinking of Shinjiro-san as scared. You really do have an effect on people, Mina-chan."

"I didn't mean to," insisted Minako desperately. "I wasn't trying to deceive him, or anything like that. I didn't want to have two boyfriends. I just…things just got out of control." She realized that she was pleading with them to understand, and that she sounded frankly pathetic, but didn't much care.

Fuuka sighed. "Well, you did try to tell him the truth," she reasoned. "I don't see that you did anything wrong."

"Wha…? Wait, how can you say that she didn't do anything wrong?" Unexpectedly, Yukari sounded offended. "She was with another man! How could that not be 'wrong?' There's nothing not 'wrong' about it!"

Minako's heart sank. "Yukari," she murmured.

Fuuka, however, didn't seem ready to cede the point. "You say that now because you're married, Yukari. You're looking at everything differently. You and your husband are happy together. It…it doesn't sound as though Minako and Shinjiro-san were very happy."

Minako heard Yukari shift uncomfortably next to her. "That doesn't make it any better," she insisted. "When you commit to something, you have to stick with it. Love doesn't work out by magic, okay?"

Fuuka sounded just a little sad, as she asked, "But love is supposed to have just a little magic in it, don't' you think? Isn't that what makes it wonderful?"

"You're just saying that because you've never been in a relationship," snorted Yukari.

It was beginning to sound as though Fuuka and Yukari were going to get into a fully fledged argument, when Mitsuru, both literally and figuratively, put her foot down.

"Enough," she announced. "We didn't come out here today to squabble like children. Let us at least try to demonstrate a little bit of decorum, shall we? I thought this was supposed to be about making Minako feel better, not worse."

Minako absolutely felt worse. She was glad that she couldn't see any of their faces, sure that at least Yukari would be staring at her with disappointment and distaste in her usually friendly eyes. Mitsuru, for all of her intervening on Minako's behalf, probably felt the same way. After all, Mitsuru was a traditionalist in so many respects, raised with good morals and good manners. Minako, in comparison, was a loose, worthless floozy.

"Everyone probably hates me, now," she mumbled to herself, aware that the self pity wasn't getting here anywhere.

Unexpectedly, Yukari spoke up. "Wait, huh? No, nobody hates you. I never said that. That's not what I meant at all."

Minako heard Yukari scoot over to her across the muddy ground, and felt a comforting hand rest against her shoulder blade. "Look," said Yukari, "all I was trying to say was that…"

Suddenly, a rumbling growl broke through whatever it was that Yukari was about to tell her. Minako was alarmed for a moment, until the laughter and groans from the other girls made her realize that the growl had come not from some roadside predator, but instead from Chie's stomach.

"Uh, sorry," muttered Chie, obviously embarrassed. "It's just that everyone was talking about food, and then I started getting really hungry…"

As they all climbed back on to their feet, Yukari reached down to help Minako up. "Come on," she said. "Actually, steak is starting to sound like a great idea right about now."

**A Healthy Breakfast**

Author's Note:Another forty minute free-write. My two favorite guys, Dag, and my little brother Daniel are both in town! So, with that in mind, here is a manly (sort-of) moment.

If you're looking at the timeline of my stories, you'll want to place this one in between the end of Bondswoman, and the beginning of Piecekeeping. Obviously, this is another "after the break-up" story.

I owe you all a major Piecekeeping update, but you'll probably have to wait another couple of days for that. These next few are going to be very busy for me, and I'm having a hard time finding a moment to sit down and spend the required couple of hours carefully sewing up the plotholes.

In the meantime, here's something to tide you over, I hope.

Okay, timer on…forty minutes starts…now!

Healthy Breakfast

"Hey…Shinji?" asked Akihiko, coming back into the room, still sweating and red-faced after his morning run. "I didn't know you were up yet. You want breakfast, or something?"

"No thanks," muttered Shinjiro. "I'm not hungry."

Akihiko had been surprised, the night before, when Shinjiro had suddenly and unexpectedly showed up on his doorstep, with a half-packed suitcase and huge dark circles under his half-lidded, bloodshot eyes. Akihiko hadn't asked any questions. Shinjiro wouldn't have liked that. Besides, it didn't really matter what the reason was. With just a hint of shame in his undertone, Shinjiro had asked if he could spend the week on Akihiko's couch, and Akihiko hadn't even considered saying no.

Now, after having listened to Shinjiro pacing noisily around on the kitchen floor for most of the night, Akihiko was starting to get just a little worried. This new development just clinched it.

"Wait, seriously?" he asked. "No breakfast? What the hell, man…aren't you the one who's always telling me how important it is to eat right, stay healthy, and all that crap?"

Shinjiro just shrugged. "That's you," he grunted. "This is me. It's different."

"How's that work?" Akihiko insisted.

"It's just different," muttered Shinjiro.

He didn't seem to be in the mood to talk, but Akihiko was used to that. Shinjiro was never in the mood to talk, especially about himself, or anything that might be bothering him. It was an awkward situation. Akihiko had begun to suspect, of course, what the trouble was. It wasn't a hard deduction to do, not after seeing the suitcase and the dark circles. Still, mend didn't ask each other if they wanted to "try talking about it." Men weren't supposed to "talk about it," or even care about it, whatever "it" was. Manly support was silent, stoic support.

Then, of course, there were days like today, when being a man's man wasn't good enough. Shinjiro clearly needed a friend, whether he liked it or not.

"Stop it," growled Shinjiro.

Akihiko blinked at him. "Stop what?"

"Looking at me like that," clarified Shinjiro. "You're feeling sorry for me."

"For you?" Akihiko snorted out a laugh. "That's not likely. I'm just getting tired of watching you sit around on your ass, that's all. I mean, at least get up and cook something. You're good at that, and I'm hungry, even if you aren't. You can't just crash at my place for free, you know."

For a moment, Shinjiro glared, looking like he was going to argue. Akihiko stared him quietly down, although he was suddenly very conscious of the many places on his body where, in the past, Shinjiro had given him a good sock and ended up making him bleed during one of their "little arguments." He wasn't really itching for a fight, this morning, especially not with a guy who looked as beaten down as Shinjiro did. It would either be too easy, or crazy hard to win. It was never easy to tell with Shinji.

"Fine," grumbled Shinjiro eventually, getting to his feet. "Whatever."

Shinjiro trudged off into the kitchen, and Akihiko listened to the sound of him banging around with pots and pans. The noises were louder than they usually were when Shinjiro cooked, as though he was doing his best to take out whatever he was feeling on the poor, defenseless cooking utensils.

Not that Akihiko really cared. It wasn't like he owned anything expensive, or that couldn't be replaced. All the fancy shit that Mitsuru had given him was still sitting in a box down in the basement, where it would stay until he went "poof" and turned into a pansy who liked to use dishes with flowery patterns on them. Nah, All Shinji was going to find on the shelves in the kitchen were plastic plates and forks, and he could do as much damage to them as he felt like.

"Hey!" Akihiko called. "What's all that noise about? I thought you were making breakfast, not turning my kitchen into a warzone."

"Shut up," retorted Shinjiro. "I can't find your damn spatula. Do you even have a spatula?"

"What the hell," asked Akihiko, "is a spatula?"

Shinjiro laughed shortly. "Yeah," he said. "I figured."

After another few moments, the noise died down again. "What are you making?" persisted Akihiko. "Pancakes?"

Shinjiro didn't answer immediately. "Eggs," he said, after a moment. Then, he added, more darkly then Akihiko had expected, "I hate fucking pancakes."

Akihiko shrugged. "Okay," he told Shinjiro. "Eggs are good. I like eggs. Protein, right? Eggs have protein in them."

"Yeah," said Shinjiro. "They do."

Akihiko nodded to himself, turned around, and started heading up the stairs for a post-workout shower. "Cool," he said. "Okay, call me when you're done."

As he made his way towards the bathroom door, Akihiko smiled very slightly to himself. Okay, maybe he wasn't much of a shoulder to cry on, but at least now, Shinjiro was doing something. Sometimes, having something to do to distract you was healthier for the soul than all the talking in the whole world.


	6. Messiah

**Prologue - December 15**

**Author's Note: **Welcome…to the dark side of Inaba. We don't have cookies, I'm afraid, but we do have crack pairings!

If you're looking for the direct sequel to **Bondswoman**, then you're not quite in the right place. Tomorrow, after I finish a few edits, I'll post the first chapter of **Piecekeeping**, which follows the further adventures of the Investigation Team and their quest to free Yu's mind from the shadows. That's the direct sequel.

This is…well, it's also a sequel to **Bondswoman**, but really, it's more of a spin-off. This story will focus on the developing relationship between Minako and Adachi, and is more of what happens behind the scenes of **Piecekeeping**. If you did not enjoy reading Adachi's characterization in **Bondswoman**, seriously, you are going to want to turn around and wait for the other story. This one just isn't gonna make you very happy, and all I genuinely want is for you to be happy!

If you did, however, enjoy reading about Adachi in **Bondswoman**, then you're in for a treat…I hope. This story will contain slightly darker content than the usual fare. Alcohol! Sex! ANGST! Sarcasm and snark! Self destructive behavior! MORE ANGST! And, remarkably enough, a happy ending! Wow, I am so excited…seriously, this is going to be fun!

So, if you're still here, fantastic! I am looking forward to writing for you!

And now, without further ado…let's have some terribly ill-advised fun, shall we?

Sincerely,

**Prologue – December 10**

**Six months after the defeat of the snake shadow...**

"Ugh," said Junpei, as he slumped into a chair across from Minako at the Junes food court. "I'm beat."

Minako just nodded, halfway through a mouthful of croissant.

"Tell you what," he continued, reaching out to tweak a corner of the croissant right out of Minako's fingers. "Here's an idea. Let's you and I take a vacation. I mean, you probably need it even more than I do, the way things have been at the station lately."

Swallowing finally, Minako frowned. "Really? Wouldn't you rather take Rise?" she asked.

"Nah," muttered Junpei. "Dude, a man needs his space, you know? Besides…I can't take Rise to the place that I want to go. It would…it would just be weird. Too many memories, and shit."

Suddenly, Minako began to understand. "Oh," she said, "you mean, Iwatodai? You want to go back and visit? That's a pretty good idea, actually…there are lots of people there I'd like to see. Mitsuru did say that if we ever wanted to drop by, she could put us up at one of the Kirijo Corporation's new hotels. That might be a lot of fun."

"Seriously?" asked Junpei. "Is there anything Mitsuru doesn't own?"

Neither of them felt the need to actually answer that obviously rhetorical question.

"If you really want to go," Minako told him, "then I think it's a great idea. I have Christmas week off of work at the station. I tried to refuse, but Dojima-san insisted. I think he forgets that I don't have any family to go home to for the holidays."

"Yeah? And what am I, huh?" Junpei sounded slightly offended. "Okay, maybe we're not family, but…we're, you know, we're something like that, anyway. And if we go back and see the rest of the SEES guys for Christmas, it'll be just like a family reunion. Sort of."

Minako nodded, but bit her lip, thinking that there was at least one former SEES member whom she wasn't entirely sure would want to see her. After her break-up with Shinjiro six months before, she was just beginning to get back on her feet, and seeing him again might throw everything back into the emotional mess that it had been when he'd first walked out of her life.

"Hey, it'll be fine," insisted Junpei, apparently reading the feelings running across her face. "He probably won't even show, and…if there's stuff you want to say to him, now's probably as good a time as any, right?"

Unable to disagree with that, Minako nodded. After all, it had been Shinjiro who had opened the door for her to go back to and find him in Iwatodai. "All right," she agreed. "Let's do it. Will you talk to Daidara-san today?"

They agreed that he would, and, after wolfing down the rest of his breakfast, Junpei jogged off to work, leaving Minako alone with a conflicted series of thoughts and feelings. Determined to spend her Saturday being as productive as possible, she tossed out her trash and headed for the grocery department to see if she could find someone to help her locate a few tomatoes for the evening's dinner.

"Oh, Minako!" called out Nanako, from somewhere to Minako's right. "Hi! Are you shopping? Can I help?"

Minako smiled. Trust Nanako to be there just when she really did need a helping hand. "Actually, yes, if you don't mind," she said. "Would you mind helping me with my grocery list, Nanako-chan?"

They walked together through the various food isles, with Minako listing her requirements, and Nanako dutifully loading them into the cart. Two people working together took significantly less time than it would have taken Minako alone, and before long they'd completed a very successful shopping trip.

"Everyone's coming home tomorrow!" Nanako announced, as Minako handed over the money at the counter. "Yosuke, and Chie, and Yukiko, and Big Bro, too! I can't wait! Dad says that he's going to take the night off work so that we can go out for a sushi dinner!"

Nanako's enthusiasm made Minako laugh. Six months ago, Yu had returned to his parents in the city, and Yosuke had traveled with Chie and Yukiko to the local university, not too far from where Yu and his family were living. She was sure that all four of them had been having a fantastic time, but it was true that things were a lot lonelier around here without their company. Naoto, Kanji, and Rise were all still working their way through high school, of course, but somehow things could never be the same while everyone as scattered across different places. She, too, was looking forward to having the gang back together.

"I'm going to go and tell Igor and the others about it!" Nanako continued. "That's why I came to Junes. I'm not in school today, so I thought that maybe they'd like to hear the good news! I'll try to bring Yosuke and everybody to see them when they're in town, but…you know how it is."

That was, in fact, not quite true. Minako, unable to ever enter the Velvet Room again, did not and could not know exactly how it was. As far as she was aware, the three Velvet Room assistants had sacrificed themselves to protect her and Yu's minds, something that she had never even had the time to convince them not to do. How Nanako could manage to talk to them, now that they were, essentially, nonexistent had always puzzled Minako. There were, however, more things in the world than she could possibly explain, and multiple experiences with shadows and personas had proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. For that reason, she never bothered to question Nanako about it. "Say hello to them for me," she asked instead. "Tell them I send my love."

Nanako was quiet for a minute, apparently thinking. "You should come with me!" she said finally.

"I'm sorry, Nanako, but I can't," Minako reminded her. "They won't let me into the Velvet Room anymore. You'll have to tell them that I-!"

"But, you can come see Adachi-san," insisted Nanako. "I can bring him out to you, remember? He's probably lonely in there with just Igor to keep him company. We should go and visit him."

That was not an idea that appealed to Minako at all. As often as possible, she tried to forget that Tohru Adachi, self-confessed culprit behind the famous Inaba serial murders, was even still alive. She'd told Dojima that he'd been killed in the attack on the Velvet Room, and most days, she heartily wished that it was true, especially after his interference with her life had destroyed her relationship with a man who she was sure she'd really, deeply loved.

Unfortunately, there were other days as well, days that Minako woke up in the middle of the night in her slightly too large, empty bedroom, and remembered the last kiss he'd given her before he'd disappeared to become the newest Velvet Room assistant. It had, unfortunately, been the kind of kiss that it was terribly hard to forget, full of longing, ferocity, and a tenderness that was totally at odds with everything that that Tohru had said about the meaninglessness of life and death. No one who really believed that life was worthless could possibly kiss like that. It was a conundrum that Minako spent a great deal of her time trying actively not to think about.

There were, therefore, a lot of complicated feelings behind her answer as she told Nanako, as politely as she could, "No thank you. I don't think I have anything to say to Adachi anymore."

"Aw," murmured Nanako, sounding genuinely disappointed. "But…Minako, I think…" she lowered her voice, and even Minako, who had excellent, practiced hearing had to lean closer in just to listen. "I think he really likes you," finished Nanako.

It was all Minako could do not to burst out laughing. Nanako had oversimplified the situation so much that it would have been hilarious, if Minako hadn't already been so uncomfortable about it. "Nanako-chan," she insisted carefully, "I don't' think he quite 'likes' me. It's…it's a little more complicated than that. Besides, I don't like him at all, so it doesn't matter."

Unfortunately, Nanako was not and had never been a stupid girl. "No," she said stubbornly, "you're lying. It's not nice to lie." Minako felt as though she'd just been caught out by a particularly strict elementary school teacher. "You're just saying that because you don't want to go. Are you afraid of the Velvet Room? It's okay if you're scared. Everyone gets scared sometimes, even Big Bro!"

Minako remembered all too well the last time that Yu, Nanako's "Big Bro" had been really frightened. The result of that fear had been an elusive rabbit shadow, which had been ultimately eaten up by Minako's giant, raging snake shadow, and that had almost resulted in the death by psychological torture of both Minako and Yu, and perhaps all of their friends as well. Looking at it that way, Minako reasoned, it was hard to imagine that it was really "okay" to be afraid.

Nevertheless, something about Nanako's accusatory tone of voice had pricked at Minako's pride. "All right," she said, relenting. "Nanako, if you want me to go with you, I'll go. Yu and Yosuke wouldn't want me to let you wander around in there alone, anyway, especially not after what happened a few months ago. I'm not going to see Adachi, you understand…I 'm just going to keep you company. Okay?"

"Okay!" agreed Nanako readily, with a beaming smile playing all throughout her voice. "Yay! Hey, maybe after we visit Adachi-san, we can ge takoyaki! Do you like takoyaki?"

They chatted together about various different lunch options as Nanako led Minako through the electronics department and up to their favorite television set. "Um," she remarked hesitantly, "Do I have to…push you inside?"

Recognizing a means of potential escape, Minako replied, "No, of course not, Nanako. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I'm pretty heavy, I know, and it might be really hard to push someone my size into a TV like this."

That of course, had been the wrong thing to say. Minako realized it even as the words were in the process of coming out of her mouth. Before she had a chance to correct the mistake, however, Nanako had both hands against Minako's back, and was saying, "No, I'm okay! I'm really strong! Chie and I have been training together, and she says that I'll probably be even faster and stronger than Big Bro someday! Um, faster and stronger than he was before he got hurt, anyway."

"Nanako-!" began Minako, preparing to attempt to say something like "It's not polite to push people, remember?" She never had the chance. Before she knew it, she was tumbling forward through the fuzzy, blurred feeling that was always the prelude to finding herself on the floor of the TV world. Nanako wasn't wrong, Minako reflected. She really was very strong for her age.

Once Nanako had joined her inside the TV, she helped Minako back up on to her feet. "I'll be right back," she promised, her footsteps heading off in the direction of the Velvet Room door. "Don't go away, okay?"

As she waited for Nanako to return, Minako wondered idly to herself whether or not this could reasonably be considered masochism.

It was unclear just how much time passed for Minako before she heard a door creak open, and recognized the sound of two sets of footsteps returning in her direction.

"…just in time," she heard Tohru saying. "If I had to sit there by myself for one more minute, I was going to go crazy and start shooting up the place. Seriously, when I agreed to this, I had no clue what I was getting into. Jail might have been better for me after all."

"You aren't allowed to shoot things," Nanako reminded him firmly. "That's against the rules. You have to be good if you want to come out."

Tohru grumbled to himself. "Time off for good behavior, huh?" he asked. "Not sure it's worth it, really…"

Suddenly, his voice trailed off, and Minako heard his feet stop dead just a few paces away from her. Here we go, she thought.

"Wha-?" muttered Tohru, sounding slightly stunned. "You? Um…heh, this is a surprise." He laughed his nervous, uncertain laugh. "Long time no see, blind girl. I was starting to think you'd forgotten about me."

"No such luck, unfortunately," sighed Minako. "Not for lack of trying, of course."

"Oh yeah? So you have been thinking about me? Good to know," said Tohru.

Minako gritted her teeth. She had every reason to hate him. She wanted so badly to hate him.

"What?" asked Tohru. "Is that all I get? No 'How have you been, Tohru?' or 'Thanks for being badass enough to pull my friends' asses out of the fire for me?'"

"I have nothing in particular to say to you, Adachi-san," announced Minako formally. "At least, nothing that would be civil enough to say in front of Nanako-chan."

That seemed to stop him for a moment, and there was a brief pause before Tohru spoke again. When he did, there was just slightly less sarcastic bravado in his voice, as though she'd thrown him off and he was trying not to let on.

"Oh," he said. "No more first names, huh? What did I do to deserve that?"

Minako thought that was a stupid question. This, in fact, was a stupid conversation. She decided that she wasn't actually going to have it after all.

Unfortunately, Nanako did not get the memo in time. "Oh, it's okay," she told him. "It's not you. Minako's just having a really tough time right now…she's still sad about Shinjiro-san."

Huh? Wait," asked Tohru, "did you and He-Man break up or something?"

Minako took a deep breath. "Nanako-chan," she murmured, "Why would you tell him that?"

"I didn't want him to think that you were mad at him!" countered Nanako. "Oh…was it supposed to be a secret? Um…I'm sorry."

Well, thought Minako, it isn't anymore. She could feel Tohru's eyes on her, and suddenly she knew that she was about to be seriously out of her depth. "We're leaving," she told Nanako in no uncertain terms. "Come on, Nanako; you know you're not supposed to be in here by yourself. If I'm going, then you should be going too."

Without waiting for a response, she started to walk back towards the exit, but soon discovered that Tohru was blocking the way. She tried to duck to one side to get around him, but he reached out and grabbed her by the arm.

"Wait, hang on," he said. "So, let me get this straight. You're a free woman now?"

"I will be when you let go of my arm," muttered Minako.

"Really? No kidding. Then…" continued Tohru, apparently ignoring her, "there's no reason why I can't take you out, right?"

Minako paused. There were, she knew, at least six hundred reasons why Tohru could do no such thing. She just had to come up with one of them. For some strange reason, she was having a hard time putting any of them into words at the moment.

"Of course you can't," she told him finally, regaining a little bit of her poise as she remembered something that should have been obvious to her from the start. "You're not allowed to leave the Velvet Room without supervision."

"Huh," said Tohru. "Okay, fair enough. What do you think, Nanako-chan? Can I go out with Minako? Does that count as 'supervision?'"

"No!" said Minako.

"Umm…" hummed Nanako thoughtfully. "Yeah, you can go, but you have to be back by nine o'clock."

"What?" demanded Tohru in disbelief. "No way, that's nuts. Come on, you can do better than that."

"Uh, okay." Nanako tried again. "Then you can stay until ten o'clock, but only if you call at nine to tell me where you are."

"Ugh," muttered Tohru. "You are so obviously Dojima-san's kid…does he ever let you have any fun? He'd better watch out, or you're gonna turn into a living terror when you get to high school. The good girls usually do. Anyway. You have to give me till midnight."

"Hey!" demanded Minako. "Is anyone listening to me? Nanako!"

"No," said Nanako, "Midnight is too late! You can come back at eleven, but you have to call at nine, and you have to bring me an ice cream from Junes."

"Isn't it supposed to be winter outside?" asked Tohru. "Seriously, what do you want with an ice cream in the middle of winter?"

Minako's head was spinning. She'd had enough. This had gone much too far already, and it was getting more and more surreal by the moment. "Nanako," she insisted carefully, "You can't just let this man go running around out in the world by himself. He's a killer! He kills people! Someone could get hurt!"

"Nuh-uh," replied Nanako firmly. "There are rules."

"Rules?" echoed Minako, helplessly.

"Yeah," agreed Tohru. "I hate to say it, but the kid's right. My hands are tied. A few months ago I tried to make a run for it, and as soon as I stepped out of the TV, I blacked out. Can't remember a damn thing about it, except when I woke up, I was on the floor with that creepy Igor guy staring down at me. My wallet was gone, too. Tch. Figures." He sighed in exasperation. "This place may not look like a prison, but just because you can't see the cuffs doesn't mean they aren't there. I never thought I'd say this, but this is even worse than getting stuck being transferred to Inaba."

Minako frowned, wondering if that was true. She didn't remember there being any "rules" for the Velvet Room attendants. Then again, in the past, it had always been Elizabeth, Theodore, or Margaret. They weren't human. Maybe the rules simply didn't apply to them. Maybe Igor had made up the rules just for Adachi. She couldn't be sure. "So, you've tried to escape before," she said.

Tohru laughed. "Come on," he said, "give me a little credit. You had to figure I'd at least try once."

Nanako made a disappointed little "tsk" sound in her throat. "You promised," she reminded him. "You signed a contract. Igor made you sign it, and I watched."

"I've never exactly made a habit of keeping promises," Tohru informed her. "Why start now? That would get old really fast. It's more interesting if I keep you guessing, right?"

"Well," said Minako, "it looks like you don't have a choice this time. Rules are rules. You'll have to learn to live with them." She tried to wrench her arm free from Tohru's grip, but he was holding her hard, and she couldn't get away. "You're hurting me," she told him. "Stop it. I'm going home."

As his grip on her arm relaxed very slightly, taking just a little bit of the pressure off, Tohru asked her, "How long has it been since you've been on a real date? I'm not talking about dinner with friends, or fighting with your boyfriend. I mean a real date. You know, like when you go out, have too much fun, order everything on the menu and then make the guy pay for it all. You told me before that I should ask you like a 'normal person,' so I'm asking you. What's the big deal? I'm a tame man as long as I'm stuck as a slave to this Velvet Room place. What have you got to lose?"

Minako considered telling him that she had plenty to lose. Agreeing to go on a date with him would mean sacrificing her pride, self-esteem, and self-respect, not to mention all of the time that it would end up taking out of her already busy schedule. There were myriad reasons why she should say no, and why she was going, without any hesitation, to say no. It was out of the question. Even thinking about it was absolutely ridiculous.

"I'm not gonna ask you again," Tohru told her. "This is your last chance. Admit it, you're curious. You want to know if you could have a good time with me. So, what's it gonna be, blind girl? Yes, or no?"

**One - December 15**

**Author's Note: **Whee, this is fun! Okay, I have to post these next two chapters together, because technically they both take place chronologically before the beginning of **Piecekeeping.** Wow, this timeline is getting a little nuts, but don't' worry, I have everything under control.

Uh, give me a few minutes before I upload the rest of the stuff I wrote this week. I have to take my laundry out of the dryer before I update anymore…it's coming, though.

Oh, if you're curious where I'm getting this interpretation of Adachi, he makes several comments during the game, especially during his social link, about preferring the city, hating how boring life in Inaba is, and being the kind of kid whose parents didn't what kind of stuff he got up to in high school. It's all there in the dialogue, you just have to look carefully to find it.

**One – December 15**

"Um," said Minako, which wasn't at all what she'd hoped would come out when she opened her mouth.

The trouble was that Tohru wasn't wrong. She was curious. She'd been curious ever since she'd met him that first night outside of Shiroku, and had been unexpectedly and unwisely attracted by the pain in his voice and the mysterious way he spoke about himself. It was no good reason for a grown woman to be drawn to anyone, but there it was, nonetheless. The more she'd grown to loathe him for the person he'd pretended not to be, the more curious she'd become about the person he really was. He was right, she did want to know what it would be like to go on a date with him, and if what he said was true, then there was nothing for her to be afraid of. Nothing, that is, except for the fact that she might not end up hating it. That possibility terrified her more than anything else. That and, of course, the knowledge that if her friends ever found out, they would probably burn her in effigy, or just refuse to ever speak to her again as long as they lived.

"Um," managed Minako, around a series of rapid-fire uncertain thoughts, "I'm not dressed to go out."

Really, she thought to herself. Really, was that the best she could come up with?

"So? Go home and change," suggested Tohru. She could hear the amusement in his voice, and knew that he was enjoying watching himself win this game. "We can meet back here at seven o'clock. I would say don't be late, but…I'm probably not going anywhere, either way."

"I can't get back in on my own," realized Minako.

"Don't worry about it," Tohru assured her. "I'll meet you at the entrance and pull you in. Just, uh, wave or something. We'll figure it out."

Minako didn't bother to answer him. Instead, she turned around, and starting walking back towards the entrance, hoping that Nanako would have the good sense to follow her. Tohru remained where he was, apparently satisfied, for once, with whatever havoc he had already managed to wreak on Minako's head.

"See?" asked Nanako triumphantly, as they climbed out of the TV together. "I told you he likes you!"

Minako opened her mouth to speak, but almost immediately closed it again. It was impossible to think of a way to respond to that. There were just no words.

**Seven o'clock the same evening…**

Minako stood outside the big TV in the Junes electronics department, after having spent the last three hours deliberating over what she could possibly wear. At first, she'd started pawing through her clothes, fingering each of the swatches she'd sewn in to try and help her figure out which pieces actually matched. Eventually, she'd realized that she had no idea what sort of thing Tohru would even like, and shortly after that, she'd decided that she didn't care what Tohru would like anyway. When she'd discovered that she did, in fact, care about it, she'd attempted to talk herself out of caring, and had ultimately given up and called Rise to beg her to come over.

"Please," she'd said to Rise, clasping both hands together in front of her in a gesture of abject pleading. "Don't' ask me why. I really don't' want to talk about it. Just help me look…um…"

"Sexy?" Rise had suggested.

No, Minako had thought. "Yes, sort of," she'd said out loud. "Do you think that you can-?"

So Rise had carefully gone through Minako's wardrobe, and rejected everything that she owned. They'd eventually headed over to Rise's house, where the teen idol had picked out a few selections from her own personal closet, and had insisted that Minako try each of them on.

"These are…kinda tight on me," Minako had told her, biting her lip.

Rise had been totally unperturbed. "Well, you said that you wanted to look 'sexy' didn't you?"

Now, standing in front of the TV, wearing her hair uncharacteristically down on Rise's express orders, Minako self-consciously tugged at the very short skirt of her borrowed dress. She was nervous, and she was so disgusted with herself for being nervous that she sort of wanted to vomit.

It was going to be a long night.

Taking a deep breath, she stuck her hand up to the TV screen, tapped on the glass, and then waved.

At first, nothing happened. That gave Minako a little bit of courage, and she tapped on the glass again, beginning to hope that maybe this trick wasn't going to work, and Tohru wasn't going to be able to tell that she was there at all.

"This is ridiculous," she muttered out loud to herself. "I already knew that this wasn't going to work. Why'd I get all dressed up like this? I must be going out of my mind…"

Then, both of Tohru's hands emerged from the TV. Grabbing on to Minako's wrists, he pulled her inside.

She hit the ground with her usual fuzzy thud, and was surprised when Tohru didn't make any snarky comments about her graceful landing. In fact, he wasn't saying anything at all, but was apparently just standing there, watching her get off the ground and dust herself off.

"What?" she asked defensively.

"Oh," mumbled Tohru, "nothing. Nope. Nothing." Oddly enough, he didn't sound quite like his usual self. There was something in his voice that made Minako wonder briefly if he was as nervous as she was. "You should wear your hair down more often. It's…it's not bad."

Minako flushed, and at the same time made a firm mental note to never wear her hair down ever again.

"The blush isn't a bad look for you, either," remarked Tohru. "It's almost cute."

"And I almost don't care," retorted Minako, aware that the response made her sound as though she were a six year old in a playground war. "How did you know I was there?"

Tohru laughed. "Actually, uh, I didn't. It's six o'clock, though."

So, thought Minako, he was so confident that she'd come, he didn't even have to look and see. Inwardly, she seethed. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"Well," replied Tohru, "I was gonna surprise you, but…I guess since you can't see, it probably wouldn't turn out right. Ever been to a nightclub?" As he spoke, he took her by the arm and guided her across the floor of the TV world. Minako, uncertain exactly where he was taking her, followed dumbly along. "There's this new club that just opened in the city," continued Tohru. "When I was in school, I used to sneak out all the time to check out the one in my home town. Heh, it was pretty easy. Security at those places is never good enough, and my parents never found out, or, if they did, I guess they didn't care."

Minako, who had not had parents in high school to care one way or another, remembered the few trips she'd taken to Club Escapade at Paulownia mall, where there were never more than four or five people at a time, except for the one very drunken old monk.

"I've been," she told him.

"Yeah?" Tohru sounded impressed. "Wow, I didn't think you'd be that kind of a kid."

"I didn't like it much," insisted Minako, holding on to stubbornness for all it was worth.

"Then you probably weren't doing it right," Tohru informed her. "Want me to teach you how to have a good time? You probably need it as bad as I do."

Minako was not so sure about that. "Are you sure it's even okay for you go out?" she asked him. "What if someone sees you? How will I explain this to Dojima-san if he finds out that, after all, you're not dead?"

Tohru was unperturbed. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "Places like where we're going are usually too dark and loud to find anyone in. Nobody will be paying attention to us."

Oh, great, thought Minako, with a little, inward sigh. She could think of few worse ideas than being stuck in a dark, noisy place with Tohru Adachi, where no one would see her or be able to hear her scream. At least, she knew that it was a bad idea on a rational level. Honestly, despite all of her misgiving and lack of enthusiasm, she wasn't afraid. Even on the day that he'd almost taken advantage of her, Minako had difficulty believing that he was really going to do her any harm, not that she could say why she felt that way, or justify it at all. At least now she had good cause to feel secure. After all, he had told her that he wasn't allowed to hurt anyone. That was true, right? Wasn't it?

Resignedly, she wondered where Rise and Junpei were right now. They'd probably, she thought, be on a nice, normal, relaxing dinner date, or maybe watching a movie at home, completely oblivious to the terrible life choices that Minako was in the process of making. Rise, though, would probably really like to visit a brand new nightclub. It was a shame, of course, that Minako couldn't invite Rise and Junpei along. A double date was always safer, in so many more ways than one.

"We're here," Tohru informed her.

"What? Where?" Minako asked, slightly puzzled.

"If we jump out here," said Tohru, "we can go straight through the TV monitor at the club. I've…had a lot of time to figure out how this place works, and how to get around. Not, of course, that I'm ever allowed to actually go anywhere. This is pretty much the first time."

"What? Doesn't Nanako ever come and take you out?" asked Minako, remembering the way that she and Theodore had used to go on little "dates" when she had been the Wild Card.

"Um…well, yeah," muttered Tohru. "I mean, she's a nice kid, but…she's seven years old."

"Eight," corrected Minako mechanically, knowing that Nanako would not have liked hearing him age her down by a year.

"Yeah, whatever, sure," agreed Tohru, with one of his nervous laughs. "She's kinda young. We don't…exactly want to go to the same places."

I, thought Minako, am also "kinda young." She could only assume that Tohru was settling for the best that he could get, at this point. "How old are you, anyway?" She asked. "I don't think you've ever told me. That doesn't seem fair, especially now that we're on a date together."

There was a moment of awkward silence before Tohru cleared his throat. "Is that…really something you need to know?" he asked eventually.

Minako didn't actually care one way or another, but she was enjoying the discomfort in his voice enough to press the point. "Come on," she said. "How bad could it be? You certainly don't act any older than Kanji or Yosuke, so…"

That jibe apparently touched a nerve. "Hey, don't compare me to your dumbass little friends," muttered Tohru. "I'll be thirty in two months."

"Thirty?"squeaked Minako.

"What? What's wrong with that?" asked Tohru defensively.

"Um…"Minako was genuinely taken aback. "That's…a lot older than I was expecting, honestly."

There was a long, awkward moment, during which Minako wondered just how old she had thought Tohru was. She hadn't really spent any time thinking about it before. He was just that "older guy." Older guys were definitely attractive, and every high school girl worth her salt knew that, but…thirty? Really? And he was still excited about spending time at a nightclub?

Abruptly, Tohru started pulling her by the arm again. "Come on," he mumbled. "Let's go."

Minako's feet left the ground, and she felt herself falling again through the blurry, fuzzy space between the TV world and her own world, until she managed to get a foothold on the floor again. She was pleased that, just this once, she'd managed not to land on all fours, or worse, on her face.

It was obvious immediately that she was at a club. The atmosphere around her had totally changed from the quiet, almost eerie calm that came from walking through a shadow-free TV world. There was now noise everywhere, and loud, insistent dance music that Minako didn't recognize blaring through what she could only assume was in impressive pair of nearby speakers. People were talking and laughing, shuffling around, and the echoes of their feet on the floor indicated that this club was a lot more popular than Club Escapade had ever been during Minako's high school days.

"Do you think anyone saw us?" she asked, hoping that Tohru had landed close enough nearby to be able to find her again.

From just behind her right shoulder, she heard him say "No, it's like I said. Nobody's paying any attention to us."

Someone jostled into Minako, knocking her around, and she unconsciously stepped back closer to Tohru, afraid of getting bowled over or lost in the unseen crowd. She heard him laugh as he reached out to slide one hand protectively around her waist. "Yeah, good idea," he told her. "We should probably stick together. Nanako-chan and Igor would be pissed if I came back without you. I might lose my parole forever if that happens."

Minako was aware that what Tohru said made sense, and that she probably should do her best to stay near him. At the same time, she knew that he was toying with her, and probably enjoying every moment of it.

"Wow," muttered Tohru. "It's nice to be back in the real world."

"The Velvet Room really isn't that bad," said Minako.

"That's…not exactly what I meant." Tohru sighed appreciatively. "No, it's just…it has been a really, really long time since I've been anywhere with a population of more than a few hundred. I mean…Inaba's the kind of place where city people go to die. This, this is the real thing."

Minako honestly didn't notice much of an improvement. Even if she'd only spent the last couple of years in Inaba, she'd never really seen a reason to compare it to Iwatodai. There were some nice things about living in a place where everyone knew her name. A small town with fewer people and fewer places was easier for her to figure out how to navigate on her own, and the slower, more sedate pace of Inaba life and offered her a way to be at least partially self sufficient.

Apparently reading the look on Minako's face, Tohru laughed. "Not convinced, huh? Okay, fair enough. I guess that's my job for tonight; helping you figure out how much you've been missing out on." Turning her around, he started leading her forward, and Minako could feel the push and shove of the crowd on all sides as they made their way through the room.

"Tell you what," said Tohru. "Why don't I start by buying you a drink?"

Minako shook her head. "I'm underage," she reminded him.

"So?" She could hear the shrug in Tohru's voice. "I'm not. See? Sometimes, it can be nice, having an older guy around."

Somehow, Minako didn't think that going out drinking really counted as the "being good" that Nanako had insisted on before they left. The idea of Tohru disappearing in a puff of smoke because he'd broken the rules was definitely an intriguing one, although Minako wasn't actually sure if drinking, especially since Tohru really was legal to do it, would constitute a broken rule. It was certainly against the rules for her, but, then again, she didn't have to worry about getting zapped back to the Velvet Room if she misbehaved.

"Come on," Tohru cajoled her. "You're so tense it's stressing me out. This is supposed to be fun, right?"

There was no way, thought Minako, that this could be fun unless she could find a way to stop thinking about all of the reasons that she shouldn't be doing it. Maybe Tohru was right, she decided. Maybe a drink would at least help her get through the rest of the evening.

"Okay," she said, relenting. "Yeah, that would be nice. Thank you."

**Two - December 15**

**Author's Note: **All my jobs closed today! So did my school! I have no homework, no money, and local public transportation isn't running, so I will probably stay at home and write all day. What a treat for me.

I should mention that after reading this chapter, you will wonder if anybody could actually get this tipsy after a single drink. Yes, they definitely can. When I was just a little older than Minako, I remember distinctly having my first drink at a college cast party, where I got very tipsy very fast, mostly because of my inexperience with alcohol, and the fact that I'd forgotten to eat anything. So yes, this sort of thing does happen to real people.

Oh, and don't worry, we haven't lost crazy!Adachi forever. Love can change people, but not THAT much. Actually, we see him being crazy in the next chapter of this story, so stay tuned!

**Two – December 15**

It felt like only twenty minutes after Tohru handed her the drink that Minako began to realize why she'd never tried this before. There were a lot of unfamiliar sensations in both her mind and body, some of which were pleasant, but all of which were a little alarming. For one thing, the world was spinning. Well, no, she corrected herself internally, it wasn't exactly spinning. It was just that every time she moved her head, everything around her felt like it took a few extra seconds to catch up. If she'd been able to see what was going on, she was sure that it would have been easier for her, but as it was the room had turned into a very dark, dizzy whirl-i-gig that kept throwing off of her balance at odd moments.

Tohru's arm around her waist, Minako realized, was probably keeping her in a fully upright position. She hoped he hadn't noticed that, as they stood together in a far corner of the room, sipping their drinks and listening to the blaring of the music. Had it gotten louder, wondered Minako? It sounded louder to her now, although she could, for some reason, no longer make out all the words of the song. Not, of course, that it mattered. Dance music never had words worth paying attention to, anyway.

"Feeling better?" asked Tohru, with a hint of that condescending amusement in his voice that made Minako want to kick him. Deciding that was actually not a bad idea, she tried to kick him, missed, and stumbled forward directly into his arms.

"Wow," he laughed, "you're actually drunk. I had no idea you were such a lightweight…although, I probably should have guessed. You are pretty small."

"I'm not drunk," Minako informed him. "I'm just dizzy."

"Yeah?" asked Tohru. "Would you even know if you were drunk?"

That, thought Minako, was a reasonable question, and the answer to it was, of course, no. She'd never been drunk before, and she'd never even had a real drink before, but people always talked about how drinking was terrible for you, and she was sure that if getting drunk only meant getting a little bit dizzy, they wouldn't be adamant about not doing it. Therefore, she deduced, she couldn't be drunk. Besides, Tohru had been right. She did feel a little bit better, now. Things just weren't quite so awkward anymore.

"Everyone else is dancing," she told him.

Tohru sounded surprised. "Yeah, that's true. I mean, it is a club. Why, do you want to dance?"

Minako was not sure if she wanted to dance. The room already seemed to be dancing around her, just a little bit. Maybe that was what put her in the mood. "Ye-I don't know how," she said. "I…might bump into things. A lot." I usually do, she thought.

Tohru guided her out away from the wall a bit, and then put his other hand on her shoulder, pulling her in closer to him. "Hey, if you want to try, I'm game," he said. "Do you even know how?"

Minako thought about that. "I watched the girls at Club Escapade doing it a few times," she said. "So, um, maybe? Do you?"

"Who cares?" asked Tohru, with a grin in his voice. "It's not like you can see me, so I don't have to work too hard to impress you with my moves, right?"

Minako stepped on his toe on purpose, and then gave him a very innocent little smile, which made him laugh even more.

"I guess I'd better get used to getting stepped on," he sighed. "Something tells me you're going to be doing a lot of that tonight."

Minako let him readjust his hands, so that one of them was at the small of her back, and the other was just behind her shoulder. As he moved her on to the floor, she leaned in to him to help keep her balance, and felt his grip on her tighten slightly, then relax.

"Nah, this isn't gonna happen," he told her. "We can't move like this." Unexpectedly, he pulled her in much closer, and again Minako tread on his foot, although this time it had been a legitimate mistake. "This is how it's supposed to be."

They started to move together, which was uncomfortable and embarrassing for Minako at first, who was aware that, although this had apparently been her idea, she had no idea what she was really doing. Tohru spun her out once, and she couldn't seem to get herself to stop spinning in the right place, forcing Tohru to grab her around the waist to rein her back in.

"Oh," said Minako. "I'm…actually too blind for this."

"You're fine," muttered Tohru. There was something different about his voice when he said it, but the dizziness and confusion in Minako's mind made it hard for her to figure out just exactly that meant.

They stood pressed together for a while, trying their best to keep up with the music, and Minako felt herself flush with embarrassment as she wondered whether or not they were the only ones on the floor dancing quite this close. Was this really the way that it was supposed to be, or could they just not separate because Minako's eyes wouldn't let her dance on her own?

"Tohru," she began.

"What? What's wrong?" he asked, so quickly that she realized he was a bit on edge too.

Minako reached out and ran her fingers along the side of his face, trying to figure out what his expression looked like.

He laughed under his breath. "This again? Try not to put my eye out, okay?"

Minako frowned. "I can't," she informed him. "Your eyes are closed. Why are you dancing with your eyes closed?"

There was a moment of silence before Tohru answered. "Uh, good question," he said finally. "I don't know. Maybe so you don't stick your fingers in them."

"That," insisted Minako with perfect, alcohol-induced certainty "does not make any sense."

Her fingers crawled up to his forehead, where she played idly with a lock of hair for a moment before saying sweetly, "Your hairline is receding. Are you sure you're only thirty?"

"Hey!" exclaimed Tohru, surprised.

It was unclear which one of them actually started it, although Minako had the sneaking suspicion that, due to her uncertain, dizzy state, it might have been her. She certainly heard Tohru try to mumble something unintelligible as she kissed him, implying that he probably wasn't expecting it to happen, and therefore, it must have been her fault. She kissed him anyway, although it was only a moment before he pulled away from her.

"Wow," he murmured, "Okay, you're really drunk...we've been here before, remember? Didn't we learn anything the last time this happened?"

Minako shook her head at him. "Not guilty," she said. "The last time 'this happened,' it was your fault. You kissed me."

Tohru was still holding her, although now, for some reason, he was doing it very gently, as though unwilling to keep her any closer to him than he absolutely had to. "You remember that, huh?" he asked.

"Of course I do." Minako remembered it very well. She remembered what a wonderful kiss it had been, but she also remembered just how horribly everything had turned out when she'd discovered that Shinjiro had been watching the two of them the whole time. It was, she reminded herself, Tohru's fault that things had ended up all broken between Minako and Shinjiro, and normally she would have been furious at him for that. She had been furious at him only an hour ago. Somehow, now, it didn't feel quite so bad. What was that all about?

"So do I," agreed Tohru quietly. "I…" he stopped, hesitated, and then said, "You know, it gets pretty boring sitting all by myself in the Velvet Room, staring at the back of Igor's head all day…I end up thinking about that day a lot. All the time."

Minako became suddenly aware that Tohru's hands were trembling. "Aha!" she announced triumphantly. "See? You're shaking. You're drunk too!"

"Nah," mumbled Tohru. "I haven't been drinking booze…just water. It's…it is kinda warm in here, and…you know what, nevermind."

This time he kissed her, and Minako let him pull her back against him, resting her hands on his shoulders as his fingers wound themselves through her probably tangled hair. It was a long, slow, gentle kiss, and Minako expected any moment for Tohru to turn into the insistent, hungry man she'd felt the first time she'd kissed him, all hands and desperation. Part of her was almost looking forward to it, and that same part of her had the good graces to be slightly ashamed of that feeling.

Finally, he broke the kiss, although he didn't let go of her, muttering breathlessly, "Aw, man…curfew sucks. I mean, it really sucks. So much."

"What?" Minako honestly wasn't sure what to make of that. "Is that it?"

Tohru laughed. "Is what it? What, you want me to kiss you again? And here I thought you said you hated me."

"No, I mean…" Minako was having some trouble clearing her thoughts up enough to express exactly what she did mean. "Didn't you start buying me drinks in the first place so that you could get me drunk enough to…you know. Didn't you?"

"Uh, well…" Tohru was taken aback. "Okay, so maybe you aren't as drunk as I thought you were. Wait, you knew that the whole time, and you still went along with it? You are…really a strange kid. I don't know what to make of this one. Good job, you've got me stumped."

Minako leaned forward to try to continue where they'd left off, but Tohru shook his head and pushed her away. "No, I can't," he insisted.

"Why not?" asked Minako, now at least partially aware, if not much interested in the fact that the drink was having a pronounced effect on her decision-making process.

"Because," said Tohru, more seriously than she'd heard him speak the whole night, "You do amazing, crazy things to my head, and if we keep this up, I'm gonna end up breaking a rule and getting locked in the Velvet Room for the rest of eternity. I said it's not worth it, remember?"

Minako thought about that for a moment. "I think," she said, frowning, "that you're lying. I think you made up those rules so that I would come out with you. Igor doesn't really know what you do when you're out of the Velvet Room. How could he? You lied about it then, and you're lying about it now."

"I didn't lie about trying to escape," he told her. "If I try to leave without Nanako-chan's permission, I really do end up on the floor…and I think I really did have my wallet stolen. Maybe you're right, though, about the rest of it. Maybe that stuff wasn't true." He sighed. "Old habits, I guess?"

"Kiss me again," she told him.

"Well," muttered Tohru, "you are the 'guest,' right? And it is my job as the Velvet Rom attendant, to do whatever the 'guest' wants, I guess. Interesting loophole, there." He kissed her again, a little more intensely than he had before, and Minako wrapped her arms around his back to drag him closer against her.

"We'd better get out of here," he breathed. "It's getting late."

"I'm not running away this time," Minako insisted.

Tohru laughed, and brushed some hair quickly out of Minako's face. "No, you're right, I think I'm probably the one running now. You…really are something else. Tomorrow morning, you're gonna wake up with a hangover, you're gonna remember what just happened, and you're going to want me dead. Good thing you can't get into the Velvet Room by yourself anymore…"

He took her by the hand and started leading her away from the crowd, back towards the TV monitor where they'd originally come in. Minako realized that she was getting sleepy, now that she had a moment to spend thinking about it. How late was it, she wondered? Was it already eleven?

"Come on, Cinderella," muttered Tohru, preparing to lift Minako up to reach the TV screen. "Let's get you home before you turn into a pumpkin."

For some reason, Minako thought that was hilarious. "I'm not Cinderella," she giggled. "You're Cinderella!"

**Three - December 16**

**Author's Note: **This chapter directly references the events that take place in another story of mine, called **Pianissimo.** It's a short one, but it might help with background. You can find it on my profile page if you're interested.

And now, for your reading pleasure, Minako realizes that alcohol is bad for you, and Adachi has lots of ANGST.

This chapter takes us right up until the events of the first chapter of **Piecekeeping**, which is finally posted! Huzzah! Okay, so now that the timelines are in sync, again, I will probably update one of these stories every day. I will probably alternate. **Piecekeeping** one day, **Messiah** the next, so on and so forth. Hopefully that will keep them running alongside each other very well. I'm trying to post them in such a way that you can, if you like, read them both and still follow the timeline properly.

Actually, I think the next three updates are to **Piecekeeping, **so you can definitely expect to see those tomorrow and Friday! Saturday, though, I have a date, so I'm taking it off. Thanks for your patience.

**Three – December 16**

Minako woke up suddenly when she realized that she was getting wet. Shaking herself and shivering, she felt around on the floor until she realized that, somehow, she was lying out on the pavement, while heavy, slushy, lumpy flakes of snow spattered down all over her face.

"Why…?" she asked of no one in particular, doing her best to sort out where on earth she was. What had happened? Had she been attacked? Why would she be alone in the middle of what sounded and felt like the Inaba shopping district? What time was it, anyway?

Her head was throbbing madly, and at first she began to worry that the shadows might be in the process of attacking her mind again. It took her a few moments to collect herself, and to understand that this wasn't a shadow-related headache. Shadow headaches felt different, sharper and more acute. This one was just a dull and banging pain at the front of her face, right above her eyes.

Then, suddenly, as the headache pounded against her brain, so did the dawning of realization.

"Oh. Ow!" Minako frowned. She had a hangover.

As it was her first ever hangover, and now she fervently hoped it would be the last, Minako spent a few moments letting herself dwell on that, and wondering why in the name of all that was holy anyone would ever voluntarily drink alcohol if this was what happened afterwards. Where had she been drinking alcohol last night, anyway? She'd gone to the Velvet Room with Nanako, and they'd met Tohru, there, and then…

"Shit!" shouted Minako. She didn't know if there was anyone around to hear her, and in that moment, she didn't care.

Everything swam back in a brutal blur of horrible hindsight. She'd gone to a club with Tohru, where he'd offered her a drink, and they'd started dancing, and then that had led to…

"No, not again," she moaned. How, just when she'd started to get the hang of life in Inaba, had she managed to get caught up with him again?

And yet, she realized, it could have been so much worse. If she remembered correctly, and she was sickeningly sure that she did, then she'd wanted the two of them to go farther last night. Tohru had refused. No, that couldn't be right. Tohru Adachi, famous for his inability to control his darker instincts, had refused to touch her?

Was she really that unattractive? Had he just being toying with her the whole time? Was this a part of another one of his twisted mind games?

No, she reminded herself firmly, that was not the point. The point was that she had somehow made it out without losing too much of her dignity, and that it would never, ever be allowed to happen again. No matter what her heart thought it wanted, no matter what her darker instincts were telling her to do, she was not going back into that Velvet Room for love or money.

Nearby, a clock struck the hour, revealing to Minako that it was already twelve o'clock in the afternoon. Apparently, Tohru had left her lying there outside the door to the Velvet Room. Seriously? He couldn't have managed to get her back to her house? She must have fallen asleep…how embarrassing.

A cold flake of snow dropped on to Minako's bare leg. Startled, she reached down and felt around to try and figure out just exactly what she was wearing. It was…very short, very thin, and definitely not appropriate for anything that she could possibly find herself doing today. Now that she took the time to think about it, she was also absolutely freezing.

Desperately hoping that no one she knew happened along to see her, Minako fled full-tilt in the direction that she thought led to home. She had places to be, things to do, and she could not do any of them in this terrifyingly tiny dress.

**Meanwhile, inside the TV world…**

Tohru Adachi sat on the floor of the second level of Magatsu Inaba, and watched the nauseating colors that painted this place that had come from somewhere inside him.

Uh oh, he thought to himself. That hadn't exactly gone the way he'd planned.

It had all started out very straightforward. He had needed a ticket out of this place, and Minako was one of the only people who he knew would be able to take him. The fact that she was a nice looking girl hadn't hurt, either. They'd made it to the club, he'd gotten her a drink, and then…what had happened? Something had gone horribly wrong, and not for the first time, either.

He'd been thinking about her for months, ever since they'd shared that kiss outside the Velvet Room. It had gotten so bad that he knew he needed to find a way to get her out of his system, and this date at the club had seemed like the perfect way. He'd have her there, would get what he wanted from her, would find out what it was like to be with her, and then he'd feel better. All of the crazy images of her in his head would finally leave him alone.

Last night, he'd had his chance, and he'd blown it.

Somehow, in that moment, when she'd kissed him like that, all of the things he'd been trying not to think about had come flooding back. The way she'd called him her "hero" once, and the kiss she'd given him at the riverbank. She treated him like he was still alive inside, even though he knew that so many parts of who he'd once been were already dead. He'd just wanted to stand there and keep her close to him forever, to let her touch him and feed his hunger for real, tender human contact. It was only when she was near him that Adachi ever felt that there was any truth behind that naive shit that Yu Narukami had once said.

"You can still start over," Yu had told him, just before dragging him out of Magatsu Inaba and into the waiting arms of the local police force.

Adachi hadn't believed it then, and he didn't really believe it now, but he wanted to. He wanted to believe it more than he wanted anything else in this fucked-up, twisted world full that he'd made for himself. By himself, there was no way out, but maybe with her...

Sometimes, Adachi imagined her looking out at him with Hinata's eyes, the gentle way Hinata had looked at him before she'd realized how little he was really worth. When they'd been together, Hinata had gazed at him with this little half-smile on her face, and Adachi had gotten lost in those eyes, and the way they made him feel like there was a future to look forward to.

After that, after Hinata had realized how little he really meant to her, Adachi had understood that there was no future worth having. If she couldn't see him as the man he wanted to be, then how could he see himself that way? Why should he try? He wasn't worth the effort, and neither was anyone else. He'd wanted to prove to himself and the world that Hinata had been right, that they were all worthless and that it didn't matter what they did. It didn't matter what he did. It never had, not until he'd discovered the power of persona, and had understood that there was no more use in having dreams He'd turned those dreams instead into self-destructive nightmares, and then he'd brought them to life, because at least that way he could keep reminding himself that he was worthless, just enough to make sure that he never forgot it again.

For some stupid, nonsensical reason, Adachi couldn't stand the idea of that girl seeing him the way he saw himself. He loved the fact that she was blind. When she looked at him, he could feel himself disappear into whomever it was that she'd rather imagine. It was the most liberating thing he'd ever experienced. Maybe that was why when she'd asked him to show her the darker parts of him, he couldn't do it. All those desires had just faded away into whatever he was begging her to believe in. He wanted her to keep seeing it, whatever it was, so that she could believe enough for the both of them.

He admired her, too. She was beautiful, in the way that a girl that age could sometimes be beautiful just by being too innocent to understand the different ways she could make herself ugly inside. She was braver than he had ever managed to be, sticking her neck out for people that Adachi knew probably never bothered to love her as much as she deserved. He hated her for that, because it was idiotic and annoying, but it was also wonderfully stubborn and fascinating in a strange, contradictory way.

"Goddamnit," he muttered. He couldn't get the way she'd kissed him out of his mind. Every few minutes he'd imagine it again, and would feel it again, and would want it again. She melted him inside, made him feel things, and he hated to love it. It haunted him.

Adachi was in trouble now, he knew. She mattered to him, so much it was painful, and he wasn't having any luck talking himself out of it.

Now that something mattered again, all bets were off. He didn't know what to believe anymore.

From behind him, Adachi heard a sudden movement, and he spun around to face a Free Bambino, an annoying little shadow shaped like a child with a horrible high-pitched cry that made the hairs stand up on the back of Adachi's neck.

Wonderful, he thought. Finally, a way to vent all of these crazy feelings.

"Persona," he muttered, and Magatsu Izanagi slunk out of the depths of his soul to take one baleful, disdainful look at the shadow in front of him.

Then, Adachi shot the shadow. He shot it repeatedly, unnecessarily, enjoying the feeling of his fingers clenching on the grip of the gun as he nailed the shadow into the ground with a barrage of bullets. He shot it out of a need to exercise control, control that he wanted but didn't have over his life, himself, and the way he thought about that girl.

As it exploded into red and black shadow essence, he turned around and walked away. "Tch," he muttered, "Boring."

Even that hadn't felt like anything after all. Everything was empty.

Minako's face was still hovering in front of his mind, right behind his eyes. What would she have thought, he wondered, if she'd seen that?

**Not long afterwards, at the Junes food court…**

Minako and Yu waited patiently outside the electronics department. Yosuke and the rest of the investigation team had gone in to scope out the Velvet Room, leaving Minako and Yu, as usual, without anything useful to do. For once, Minako didn't mind. She had a lot of things to think about.

"You look stressed," Yu told her. "What's up? Trouble at work?"

"Uh, no." replied Minako. If there was anyone, she knew, who she could actually talk to about this, it would be Yu. He and Junpei were, hopefully, the only people that actually knew what had happened between her and Tohru during the previous year, and she had every intention of keeping it that way for as long as she possibly could.

Then again, now Nanako probably had an inkling of what was going on as well. More than inkling, in fact. Nanako had almost set the two of them up! This was getting out of hand. How many people could she reasonably expect to keep this secret for her? The truth was just dying to get out, and that would be the end of every significant relationship Minako had begun in Inaba since she'd arrived.

"Do you want to talk about it?" pressed Yu.

Yes, thought Minako. "No," she said out loud, "No, it's nothing, thanks. I'm just tired, I guess."

That was possibly the lamest excuse she could have come up with, she knew, but Yu seemed to accept it. "Okay," he told her. "But, just keep in mind…if there's something bothering you, you don't have to keep it to yourself. We're never gnona get through this thing unless we're willing to do it together."

"Yeah, I know," said Minako, biting her lip. "Thanks. Um, if there's anything to tell, I'll let you know."

There wouldn't be, she reminded herself, anything to tell ever again. This was, undeniably, the very last time.

**Four - December 17**

**Author's Note: **I've got a few important things to say today!

First of all, I had to re-write sections of chapter three of this story. Adachi's inner monologue just needed to be redone. Please, and I ask you as a writer in need, before you read this chapter, go back and re-read chapter three, just so that you can get a better sense of the flow of the story. It would make me so very happy if you would do that.

Also, I am very excited, because the fantastic and talented **Supernova23** let me work on a story with him! It's called **Crosses to Bear**, and he posted it last night! Please check it out, if you have the chance, and please make sure to read Chapter two, because that's the part that he wrote, and it's really quite brilliant.

And finally, last but not least, I am delighted to see that so many wonderful people are reading and following my story! I know you're very busy, so no pressure of course, but if you have the time, I'd love to see a review or a comment from you. I'm not much good at writing romance, so your feedback is welcome and appreciated! If you're enjoying it, please do let me know! If there's something you'd like to see in this story that I haven't done, I'd love to hear that as well.

**Four – December 17**

Minako was already seated at her desk when she heard the familiar grumbling and stomping that always heralded the arrival of her boss, Ryotaro Dojima. He slumped down into the chair just across from hers, and Minako wordlessly handed him the cup of coffee she'd prepared only minutes before.

There was a long silence, followed by a faint slurping sound, and then Dojima's sigh of relief. "You're a godsend, Arisato," he remarked. Minako tried to hide a smile.

"And you , sir," she murmured, careful to keep her tone as respectful as possible under the circumstances, "are a caffeine addict."

"Damn right," mumbled Dojima. "After the day we're in for today, you'll probably be one too." He sighed. "You ready for some bad news?"

Minako, whose life recently had been one long, incessant string of bad news, nodded. Dojima took a deep breath.

"We're starting to think," he told her gravely, "that we may have another serial killer on our hands. Last night, some poor guy coming out of the drug store found the body of a high school student lying on the side of the road. She'd been dead for at least two hours. The marks on her neck were pretty similar to the ones we found on that schoolteacher last week, so the assumption of the higher-ups should be pretty obvious."

Minako opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. At least one part of her was trying very hard not to panic. It was impossible, she thought. Why would the murders be starting up again now? There was no way that it could have anything to do with Tohru, who was safely locked up inside the Velvet Room, wasn't he?

She was uncomfortably conscious of the fact that he wasn't entirely "locked up." In fact, juts the other night, they'd been making out at a local club. Had he gotten away from her that night, and done something horrible? How could she know? After all, she couldn't see him. It would have been easy for him to sneak away from her in that crowd. Not, of course, that she could remember a moment when he hadn't been touching her somehow. Minako felt her face flush as she thought about it.

"Luckily," Dojima was saying, apparently and mercifully oblivious to the turmoil taking over inside Minako's head, "unlike the murders we had two years ago, it looks like there's some logic to these. This guy's got a pretty classic MO, one that shouldn't be too hard to trace."

Minako perked up a bit when he said that. That, at least sounded promising. Daring to hope, she asked, "What sort of MO?"

"He strangles women with some kind of fabric or something," Dojima informed her. "Maybe a belt, or a tie."

The world lurched sickeningly around Minako again.

Dojima must have seen the alarm on her face, because he suddenly asked her, "Hey, are you okay? Maybe I should have been more sensitive with this stuff. After all, you are a girl. Still, I have to tell you, if you're going to have a future in this department, then you're gonna need to show a little more guts."

Minako nodded distractedly. "Yes, sir," she managed. "I'm fine, sir. Um…excuse me a moment, please? I need to make a personal call."

**Later that day, in the Velvet Room…**

"Hello Igor! Hello, Adachi-san!" called Nanako, walking into the Velvet Room, still wearing her backpack from school. "Um, excuse me, but, Adachi-san, are you busy? Minako's waiting outside, and she wants to see you! She says it's important."

Adachi stood up so fast that his chair fell over. Aware that Nanako and Igor were now both staring at him, he cleared his throat and did his best to sound disinterested as he said "Yeah, I guess so. Sounds more fun than hanging around here, anyway."

As Nanako led him out through the Velvet Room door, Adachi reflected on just how good this girl was. It had been almost two whole days since they'd kissed at the club, and he'd been sure that she would come running in to ask him about it, or at least to yell at him as soon as she'd woken up and remembered what she'd done the night before. Instead, she'd left him pretending not to dwell on it, until it was he, instead of her that was chomping at the bit for a chance to have things out with her. It had been all he could do not to start begging an eight year old kid just to let him out for a few minutes so that he could track her down. Adachi had been sure that, being the only one of them who was still sober, he'd had the upper hand when he'd dropped her off outside the Velvet Room. He'd changed his mind when, after two days of hearing nothing from her, he'd had to spend twenty minutes just trying to focus on the little tasks like buttoning his shirt that morning. She was driving him insane.

Just as Nanako had said, Minako was waiting for them in the shopping district, standing against the wall across from the door. She was still dressed in her working clothes, meaning she'd spent the day at the police station. Adachi had always thought professional wear looked good on her. Without thinking about it, he ran a self-conscious hand through his hair, then realized how pointless that was, and laughed a derisive little laugh.

Minako looked up when he laughed. "Oh," she said, there you are."

Something about her tone didn't sound right. She was way more nervous and uncomfortable than he'd expected her to be, even in light of what had happened between them.

"Decided that you missed me after all, huh?" asked Adachi.

Minako frowned, and took a deep breath. "Adachi-san," she said, "I need to ask you something."

Here it comes, he thought. Now, he knew, she was going to ask him about the kiss, and it suddenly occurred to him that for all the fixating he'd done over the past two days, he still wasn't sure how he was going to answer her. He should play it off, he knew, make a joke about it, try to grab back that upper hand. It was hard when she looked so good in that skirt, though. He wanted to take her in his arms right here and now.

"Come on," he began. "Do we really have to do the formal thing? I mean, it's not like we haven't…"

"Was it you who killed the high schooler behind Shiroku pub last night" interrupted Minako. "And the schoolteacher last week?" Be honest with me. I've told you before; I'm very good with people. I'll know if you're lying."

Adachi stopped talking. He stopped thinking about the way her legs filled out that skirt. It was like the air had just all been sucked out of his lungs.

"What schoolteacher?" he asked. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Minako bit her lip for a moment, then nodded. "That doesn't matter," she told him. "You don't' need the details. Just answer my question, yes or no."

A cold trickle of acid ran down the back of Adachi's neck. Of all the people in the world, he thought, of everyone he'd ever met, this question cut him the deepest coming from her. There was nothing on her face right now that resembled the expression she'd given him at the riverbank, when she'd told him that he was definitely and undeniably human, despite both his actions and his protests. Something inside of him that had been building up for two days suddenly wrenched and snapped painfully.

"No," he muttered, and it came out as almost a snarl. "That's got nothing to do with me. Unlike that asshole kid, Kubo, I don't take credit for shit that other people do."

There was a brief, tense moment before Minako breathed out a short sigh of relief. Adachi watched her shoulders slump slightly and realized that she'd been holding her breath.

"What," he asked, too angry and disappointed to bother keeping the bitterness out of his speech. "Did you want me to say that I did it? I guess that would have worked out pretty well for you after all. You could have hauled me in to the station and showed Dojima-san just how well you managed to solve your first case. Sorry to ruin your plans, but it wasn't me."

"Don't be ridiculous," mumbled Minako. "That would have been horrible."

"Why?" insisted Adachi. "Why would you care one way or another if I did it? At least that would make sense, right? Once a murderer, always a prime suspect. And how do you know that I'm not lying? I'm a pretty damn good liar. I had your friends fooled for a long time."

Unexpectedly, Minako looked straight in his direction and gave him her best attempt at a glare. "Stop acting like a child," she told him. "You're not lying. I told you, I'm good at reading people. And we both know why it matters to me. If it didn't matter, I wouldn't have come here just to ask."

"Yeah," muttered Adachi. "I guess that makes sense." His insides were beginning to unclench, very slightly.

"I believe you," said Minako, as though she felt he needed the confirmation.

Adachi shrugged. "Why?" he asked, with a desperate little laugh. "I've never given you anything to believe."

"There isn't a 'why,' insisted Minako. "I'm not sure because I want to be. I just…I just can tell. Maybe it's leftover from my persona ability. I can figure out who people really are."

"So?" asked Adachi sarcastically, knowing that he was pushing this farther than he really wanted to. "What do you get from me? Can you see what I 'really am?"

Minako frowned at him. "You're really scared, and you're really angry," she informed him. "You are not really a monster. Does that answer your question?"

It did. Adachi was amazed by how effectively those few words relaxed the horrible, ugly things that were beginning to surface on the face of his soul.

"Let me take you to dinner tonight," he said.

Minako shook her head. "Please," she told him, "let's not start all of that again. You got what you wanted when we went out to the club, didn't you? You made me look like an idiot. You won that round, all right? I give up. Just leave me alone. I'm not going to play this game of yours anymore."

At one point, Adachi knew, it had been a game. He'd wanted to see how far he could take her, and whether or not he could break down and destroy the shining idealistic image of the world that she still had in her head. It had just been something else for him to do to pass the time, another challenge and another strike against the naïve injustice that the world always seemed to have in store for him.

Now, things were different. Something was giving out on him, and Adachi was exposed and unable to walk away.

"I can't just leave you alone," he told her honestly. "It's not gonna happen. You wanna be a good Samaritan? Feel like saving a soul today, blind girl? Come out to dinner with me. You don't want to know what it'll do to me if you say no."

At first, Minako didn't seem to know how to respond to that. Adachi could see the frustration and the uncertainty in her face, and was slightly proud of himself for not feeling even a little bit guilty about it. She bit her lip, ran a hand through her hair, then paused for a moment and thought. Adachi could see the epiphany strike on her all too transparent face.

"I'll make you a deal," she told him.

"Yeah?" he asked her. "What kind of a deal?"

I'll go to dinner with you," Minako told him, "if you'll help me solve this murder case."

Adachi raised an eyebrow. "Not that I wasn't a great detective," he told her, "but I don't' think Dojima-san would be too happy to let me consult on this one. I mean…there are a lot of problems with that idea."

Minako shook her head. "I don't want you to consult with him," she insisted. "I want you to consult with me. I want to know what makes people want to kill, what happens in a murderer's head. I want to understand what it feels like to live that way. Maybe that'll help me catch the killer. We have to get him before this goes any farther, and before anyone else has to die. It's the one thing you can do to prove to me that I'm not wrong about you."

Adachi did not want to have that conversation with her. There were few things he hated more than the idea of letting Minako in to the parts of himself that she'd spent so long looking away from. He craved to see her look at him with that innocent lack of condemnation on her face that he knew he'd never see again if he told her the things she apparently now wanted to know. He was about to lose that look forever.

At the same time, if he said no, and she left him for good, he'd never see it again anyway.

Adachi sighed.

"Fine," he muttered. "Okay, you're on."

**Five - December 17**

**Author's Note: **A head's up for my readers!

I've gotten several comments from you about how "sweet" lovestruck Adachi is…and I'm glad you're enjoying him! Still, remember, Adachi hasn't changed as a person. Although being in love might make him significantly more vulnerable, and perhaps unhealthily attached, it doesn't change the fact that he has a lot of darker things going on in his head. We'll get lovestruck Adachi for a couple more chapters, but please be warned that when he does snap, it's all kinds of crazy and destructive.

Dag actually helped me a bit with working out the dialogue in this one. He stopped in the middle of arranging a song for our MDRF singing group just to chat with me about character motivations and the way to structure the scene.

I am working on a wonderful production of Shakespeare's "Hamlet' right now, with the BaH Shakespeare Company. If you look closely enough, it seems that Adachi and Hamlet are starting to share some character flaws…or maybe they shared them all along, and I'm only now beginning to realize it.

The next **Piecekeeping** update is in the works, but my eyes are starting to give out, so I'll have to post it another day. I can't check it for typos until I get some sleep…

**Five – December 17**

This time, Minako insisted on picking out the location for their "date." She felt that she might actually be able to get something useful out of this evening, and with that in mind she did not want to have to spend the whole time panicking about potentially being caught out with Tohru.

Ultimately, she settled on Shiroku pub, mostly because Yu had told her, with information gleaned from the days when he'd worked at the bar, that there were almost never more than a couple of patrons there in the middle of the week. Hopefully, she thought, they'd be able to sort of blend into the background in Shiroku, and not attract too much unwanted attention.

"Huh," said Tohru, as they walked into the pub. "Feeling nostalgic all of a sudden? Although, last time we were here, you never actually came inside."

That honestly took Minako aback for a moment. She hadn't even thought about the fact that, essentially, she and Tohru had met for the first time outside Shiroku. What, she wondered, would life have been like today if she'd never walked past the pub that night? Shinjiro might still be around, and they might still have a chance at the life together they'd been picturing and hoping for. On the other hand, if she'd never met Tohru, then she, Yu, and all of her friends might be dead now, having been defeated long ago by the rampages of the snake shadow in the Velvet Room.

"Not exactly what I meant when I said we should get dinner," continued Tohru. "This…isn't the most fun place to take a girl out on a date."

Minako shook her head at him. "We're not on a date," she reminded him. "This is business."

"Right," sighed Tohru. "I was sort of trying to forget about that."

They grabbed a couple of seats at the bar, and took a few minutes to look over the frankly unimpressive menu. Minako had snacked a bit on her way over from the station, so luckily she wasn't too hungry.

Tohru, on the other hand, ordered three different things.

"Hungry?" Minako asked him, after they'd given their order to the kid who was acting as combination waiter and dishwasher.

He laughed a little self consciously. "Yeah, you could say that. I think it's been a month since I had anything to eat."

Minako was horrified. "What? Really? You mean, they don't feed you in the Velvet Room?" Come to think of it, she wondered, was there even any food in there at all? She didn't remember Elizabeth or Theodore ever having to eat anything. Maybe whatever kind of beings they had been just never got hungry, but…Tohru was a person!

"Feeling sorry for me? I guess that's sort of a good thing. I'll take it." said Tohru. "I don't get hungry when I'm in the Velvet Room. Once I'm in the real world, though, then I'm starving. Don't ask me why, I gave up trying to guess."

"Hmm." Minako frowned. "I don't think time passes the same way in the Velvet Room as it does out here."

"And that explains a lot," muttered Tohru. "Man, I wish I'd known that before I agreed to being stuck in there."

"You didn't have much of a choice," Minako reminded him. "It was either that, or going back to face Dojima-san. He might have killed you."

"Nah, not him," Tohru said scornfully. "He's all about justice, and mercy. Probably would have been better off today if he'd just shot me the first time around."

Minako paused for a moment. "Who would have been better off?'" she asked. "You, or him?"

For some reason, Tohru didn't answer the question.

Minako reached into her work bag, and pulled out a notebook and a pen, laying them out on the bar in front of her. At the sight of them Tohru groaned.

"Whoa, who are you, Nancy Drew?" he asked. "You…can't be serious."

Ignoring him, Minako pulled the cap off of the pen, and poised it over the pad, thinking for a moment. "Um," she began, "okay, so I think I'll start by asking you a few questions."

"Jeez," muttered Tohru.

Minako opened her mouth, and then closed it again. Somewhat to her embarrassment, she was having trouble figuring out where to go from here. She wanted Tohru to explain to her what it was that made people murder other people, and how it was that she could find a murderer if she needed to. What should she look for? What kind of person could turn into a murderer? When she'd suggested asking him, it had made so much sense in her head, but now, sitting here, uncertain what to ask, she felt increasingly stupid. It wasn't that simple, was it? What was she going to say, something like 'So, what makes you want to kill people?" It sounded ridiculous just rattling around in her mind.

"Um," she stammered.

Tohru sighed a long-suffering sigh. "I really do have to do everything, huh? Look, I've got a better idea. I'm a detective, right? At least I never lied about that."

"You're a terrible detective," murmured Minako. "Yu and Yosuke told me all about it."

"I'm a damn amazing detective," Tohru corrected her. "I know how not to get caught. Takes a good detective to be a good criminal, right?"

Minako had no reasonable response to that. As far as she remembered, Yu and Yosuke had always described the man they'd known as Adachi as being a bumbling, incompetent buffoon. Minako had seen pieces of that person in him, especially in the moments when he seemed so nervous around her that he didn't know quite what to do with his hands. She'd never considered the fact that Tohru might have actually been any good at his job.

He must have seen those thoughts in her face, because Tohru laughed mirthlessly. "Yeah, but don't feel too bad," he told her, somewhat insincerely. "I get that all the time."

"So…" began Minako.

"So," interrupted Tohru, "why don't you start by telling me what you know. Then we can figure out what I know. Okay?"

"O-okay," said Minako, aware that she had now lost control of a situation that she'd been so completely on top of only moments before. "Um, what I know…" she tried to remember exactly what Dojima had told her. What sort of information was really important in a case like this?

"Wow," said Tohru. "At this rate, you're going to be Dojima-san's coffee girl for the rest of your miserable life. Come on, it's not that hard. Tell me about the victims, maybe."

Bristling at his condescension, Minako cleared her throat. "Okay, two weeks ago," she began, fumbling around in the back of her mind for the actual facts of the case, "a first grade teacher named Akane Maruyama was found-!"

"How old?" asked Tohru, interrupting her.

Minako stopped. "What?" she asked.

"How old was the teacher?" Tohru repeated.

"I…think she was twenty six." Minako tried to remember. "Is that important?"

"Maybe. Go on," Tohru encouraged her.

Minako picked up where she'd left off. "Akane Maruyama," she tried again. "was found dead down by the riverbank at four o'clock in the morning."

Tohru made a thoughtful noise in his throat. "Who found her?" he asked.

Minako had to think about that one. "I don't know," she admitted. "Someone…who was out walking around four o'clock, I guess. Maybe a jogger?"

"You're gonna have to do better than that," insisted Tohru. "What about the other one?"

This, thought Minako, was not working out at all the way she'd planned. She'd rushed over here, determined to force Tohru to admit whether or not he'd had anything to do with the murders. Once she'd decided that he hadn't, she'd been so relieved that she apparently hadn't bothered to think through the rest of what had, at the time, seemed like a brilliant idea.

"The second one was a high school student," Minako went on. "Hinata Nakamura, seventeen."

To Minako's surprise, as soon as she said the girl's name, Tohru sucked in a sharp breath. She waited, expecting him to say something, but instead he sat there in silence for a while.

"What?" she finally asked him. "What's wrong?"

"Nah, it's nothing," he muttered. "Weird coincidence, that's all. Anyway. Shoot."

Minako wondered about that. She tried not to ask herself whether or not his exclamation had been suspicious. She'd already decided that he had nothing to do with this, hadn't she? She had to pick a story and stick to it. "An old local grocer named Nobu Kimura found her right here, in the alley behind Shiroku. He said he was coming home from having a drink with friends, but as far as we know, there weren't any 'friends' with him at the time."

Before Tohru had a chance to say anything in response to that, the food arrived, and Minako tried not to be too impatient while he went hungrily to work on his dinner. If he really hadn't eaten in a month, she thought, then three dishes might not be enough. Where was the money coming from, anyway, to pay for all this? Was it Igor's money? Elizabeth and Theodore had never seemed to be lacking in funds. Did they get a weekly stipend, or something, for "working" in the Velvet Room? Could they just make money appear, by magic? Was it secret "persona" money?

"Is that all you've got?" asked Tohru, in between bites. "That's…not a lot to go on."

"I'm not exactly working on the investigation," Minako reminded him. "I'm just the assistant."

"Obviously." Tohru chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "Both women, huh?" he asked finally. "Young women, too…heh. How can you be sure they didn't deserve it?"

That question left Minako at a complete loss. He wasn't serious, was he? He must, she knew, just be trying to get a rise out of her. Her best bet was to just move on and pretend that he hadn't said anything at all.

Unfortunately, Minako couldn't bring herself to do that. "Why would you ask something like that?" she demanded. "What kind of a horrible question-?"

"Oh, don't play innocent," insisted Tohru, are there was harshness to his tone that Minako hadn't heard since before their time together at the club. "You know how bad women can get. You've got a little bit of that in you, too. The way you teased me at the riverbank, with that blind girl game of yours…its fun, isn't it? It's fun to make somebody want you. It feels good to have the control. I get it."

Minako could not deny that. She wanted to deny it. She wanted to lose her temper and find a drink to throw in Tohru's face, but the fact was that, at least about her, he wasn't wrong.

"Maybe," continued Tohru, with a cold, hard little shrug in his voice, "maybe some guy got tired of being jerked around. He'd had enough of getting messed with, getting looked at like he was some good for nothing piece of shit, so…he shot them."

"They…they were strangled," Minako corrected him, mostly just to fill the silence. An icy chill had just swept across her shoulder blades. "And they didn't deserve it. Nobody deserves to be…to be thrown away like that. Nobody."

"Yeah?" demanded Tohru bitterly. "Nobody deserves it, huh? What about someone like me? Don't I deserve to die for what I did? Nobody would lose sleep over it, that's for sure."

"I would," said Minako, before she'd had a chance to think about whether or not she wanted to voice that sentiment out loud.

There was a long moment of silence. Minako could feel Tohru's eyes focused on hers.

"You'd get over it," he assured her eventually, but, for just a moment, his voice held a little bit more warmth than it had before. "Women always do."

Of course, Minako thought. People were designed to get over things. That's the only way they managed to survive. If anything, it sounded to her like Tohru was the one who hadn't been able to "get over it."

"Is that what happened to you?" she asked suddenly, unaware that she was even thinking the question until it came out of her mouth. "Did you get your heart broken by some woman, and now you're just ready to kill all of us for what that one person did?"

Tohru laughed a quiet, miserable laugh. "What if I am?" he asked her.

"If you are, then I think you're an idiot," Minako informed him, unsure of "idiot" was really a strong enough word to express how she felt about that. "Blaming the whole world for what happened with just one person…that's incredibly stupid. I think you're a coward who needs to figure out how to move on."

She had expected Tohru to get angry when she said that, but he didn't. Instead, she heard him lay his fork carefully down by the side of his plate, and turns lightly in his seat to face her.

"Oops," he said sarcastically. "Seems kinda too late for that now, huh?"

**Six - December 17**

**Author's Note: **Hello my favorite readers! Things are going to start picking up pretty fast in this story. This chapter is pretty relaxed, but in the next few chapters after this one, there are all sorts of exciting things that I am eager to share.

And now, off I go to work, and then to finish the **Piecekeeping** update! That probably won't be up until after I get off of work, but it'll definitely be up tonight, so stay tuned!

**Six – December 17**

Adachi had been expecting anger. He could have dealt with Minako's anger, with her white-hot denial of everything he said. She would, he was sure, go off on a tirade about truth, beauty, and the injustice of it all, and would eventually end up in a condemnation of anything and everything she mistakenly believed he stood for. Not, of course, that he bothered to stand for anything. Why waste the effort?

Of course, she didn't do any of that. Instead, she just sat there with a look of distaste and disappointment on her face, as though the subject was too disgusting for her to bother with.

Aw, hell, thought Adachi. For some reason, that cut him, in a way that any naïve, idiotic protestations couldn't have managed to do.

"So?" asked Minako, after a moment of laden silence. "Tell me about her."

Adachi just stared. "Huh? About who?"

"About your girlfriend," clarified Minako. "What was she like?"

Now, it was Adachi's turn to get angry. "Forget it," he snarled. "You know, I'm getting kinda sick of being your goddamn science experiment."

Minako was unperturbed. "The experiment's over," she informed him. "I know why you did what you did. Now I want to know more about you. You said you wanted to go on a date, right? So, tell me about yourself. That's what we'd do on a date. Tell me about your girlfriend. That might help me understand."

For some reason, the idea of her wanting to "understand" him made him feel a little bit sick. For all that she said that the experiment was over, she wasn't treating him like a person anymore. Now he was just a case study in how to not become a monster. He was aware, of course, that lots of people thought of him like that. The local news aired programs all the time, focused around topics like "how to protect your children from running with the wrong crowd," and "the problem of corruption in society." For some reason, his picture always seemed to end up on those programs, which was annoying, because it was a waste of time trying to lock him into a stereotypical murderer's box like that. There wasn't just one reason that people suddenly woke up one day and realized that life wasn't sacred anymore. There wasn't some easily identifiable cause. It was a little bit of everything.

"No thanks," he muttered sarcastically. "I think I'll pass."

Unexpectedly, Minako reached over and put her hand on top of his, in an almost childlike gesture of comfort that made his treacherous heart skip a beat.

"Please?" she asked. "I want to know."

Adachi seethed inwardly at his inability to say no to her.

"Fine," he muttered. "What do you want me to say? It was a long time ago."

"Did you love her very much?" asked Minako.

Adachi laughed. "That's it? That's what you're trying to get from me? Some kind of proof that I'm not as bad as I look, huh? What do you think, blind girl. If I was in love, would that make all of this okay?"

"Did you love her very much?" repeated Minako patiently.

"I don't know," he muttered. "It's a dumbass question, anyway. Love's just a greeting card excuse for people to act like fools."

Minako wasn't giving up, however. "Why won't you answer my question?" she insisted.

Tohru could feel the sweat starting to collect on the back of his neck. "Why the hell you want to know so bad?" he asked.

"What are you so scared of?" retorted Minako.

"What makes you think I'm scared?" asked Tohru.

Suddenly, Minako laughed. "We're playing questions," she said. "You know, that game where you answer every question with another question? It's a drama club game. I learned it in school."

"Heh," mumbled Adachi. "Yeah, I guess we are. In that case, I win. The last thing you said wasn't a question."

" Okay," continued Minako. "If you want to play like that, then I have a better question. Why is everything a game to you? If you give me a real answer this time, I'll let you win."

Adachi smiled, but it was a bitter, miserable smile. "You said it," he told her with a shrug. "You can win a game. Might as well turn the world into something you can win. Gives me something to shoot for."

"And if you lose?" Minako pressed him.

Gesturing around the bar with one lazy hand, Adachi grimaced. "Then you're a loser. Nobody wants to be a loser."

"And then," said Minako, "you try again, right? New game?"

Again, Adachi gave her an angry little laugh. "Nope," he told her. "Not this time."

For some reason, all Adachi could hear in the back of his mind was Yu Narukami telling him "You can still start over," as he watched Minako staring sightlessly but thoughtfully at the stained Shiroku floorboards.

When she finally did speak, it was distantly, as though she was still thinking about something else even while the words were piling out of her mouth.

"I think we should do this again," she said. "I mean, we should talk about the murders. I need to get more information about what happened from Dojima-san, but I'll come back when I know more, and we can try to figure it out."

"Whatever," shrugged Adachi. "Sure, fine. Not like I have anything better to do."

He paid the bill, and watched her walk out of the bar in front of him, remembering the time that he'd seen her there first, on that night when some weird instinct had made him pull her out of the way of an oncoming car, only to lead her down to the riverbank for what he'd thought was going to be an interesting bit of fun.

Why, he wondered, had he let her go that night? How come he was struggling to let go of her, now? This was definitely getting interested, but it wasn't fun anymore.

They went together to the Velvet Room door, before Minako turned around and started heading back towards home.

"Goodnight," she told him. "I'll come tomorrow so we can touch base about the case."

Then she was gone, and Adachi stood there, feeling like a sap, wishing someone would put him out of his misery. It was sickeningly clear, he decided, who the loser was here.

**December 18, at the police station…**

Minako was several hours later than usual that day, having spent the whole morning gathering information.

"Dojima-san!" she announced, laying a bundle of papers in front of him on his desk, almost the moment after he sat down. "I did some research on the case, sir!"

"Uh…you did?" Dojima seemed surprised and still partially asleep. Minako wondered if he'd been up all night at the station again. "What…what the hell is all this?"

"It's a list of names and addresses," she informed him, "of people in the neighborhoods surrounding the places where the two victims were found. The ones in red ink are people that I think it would be worth looking into as suspects. Most of them have suffered from marital or relationship trouble in the past several weeks, according to reports of several neighbors."

For a few minutes, Dojima didn't say anything. Minako tried to keep herself looking helpful and attentive, rather than impatient and panicky as she heard him leafing through the sheets she'd spent so much time writing up. Finally, he laid them down on the table and sighed heavily.

"Do us both a favor," he said, "and don't pull shit like this. I don't know where you're getting this stuff, but I can't read a single word on these lists. The letters are all jumbled up on top of each other. It looks like something Nanako might have written in kindergarten."

Minako's heart sank. She knew that her handwriting had been particularly terrible ever since she'd lost the use of her eyes, but…she'd hoped it would be better than that. It was very difficult to figure out the proper placement of words and letters when she couldn't even see what she was trying to do. Was it really that illegible? Maybe she should have asked Junpei to look it over before she brought it in…

"And I don't get what you're telling me about marital trouble. I don't know what's got into you, but if you bothered a bunch of people and asked them a lot of questions for no reason, there's no way I can back you up. This wasn't official police business, and I can't accept responsibility for it. Listen, Arisato, I know that you're bored, and I appreciate that. It's probably really hard, trying to find a niche in a place like this. Even so, you can't go running around playing detective while there's a serious investigation going on. You're going to get in trouble, or you're going to get hurt, and either one of those things leaves me with a ton of paperwork. Just…just stick to what you're good at, okay? Please. For my sake. I don't need any more headaches than I already have."

With that said, Dojima stood up, and stalked over to someone else's desk, where he began an urgent conversation that Minako couldn't quite make out. Totally deflated, she sat where she was and tried to remember that Dojima hadn't meant to be cruel. After all, he was right. She wasn't a detective, she had no experience, and her contributions probably weren't particularly useful to the case. Still, after everything Tohru had said, she'd thought hard about crimes of passion and the things that motivated them, and had spent a very long and meticulous time compiling a list of potential suspects that she thought might fit the profile of a killer she was beginning to concoct in her head. Maybe it really had been too much to hope that Dojima would find some use for it.

A little, malicious part of Minako wanted to tell Dojima all about where she'd gotten the ideas for her research. How would he feel, she wondered, if he knew that his former partner was still alive, but that he was somewhere out of his reach? How helpless and useless would that make him feel? It was, for just a few moments, a very satisfying reflection, until Minako shook herself and insisted to the treacherous inner recesses of her mind that this was no way to think about a man who had really taken her on and given her a job out of the goodness of his heart, despite the fact that he didn't need someone like her, who had few marketable skills.

Strangely enough, Tohru had taken her seriously. Sure, he'd laughed at her, and made fun of how little information she'd had, but in the end he'd listened, and answered her questions. Well, most of her questions, anyway. He hadn't been too eager to talk about that girl he'd once loved. That is, of course, if he had loved her. When she'd asked him, he'd said that love was stupid, but wasn't it only people who'd been hurt by love that said things like that?

She was thinking deeply about that when the phone rang, and so she only managed to grab it on the fifth ring. "Hello, Inaba Police Department," she informed the caller. "Do you have an emergency?"

"Hey, Mina-tan!" Junpei's voice was on the other end. "Guess what? You're gonna love this."

Minako frowned. "Junpei, you're not supposed to call me at work," she reminded him. "This is the line we use for important calls."

"Well," insisted Junpei, "you keep refusing to get a cell phone, so I have to break rules. Join the 21rst century with the rest of us, and then maybe I won't have to call you at work. Anyway, listen to this; Daidara-san says I can take the week off starting on the 22nd!"

Minako took a moment to realize what he was talking about. In the midst of everything that had happened recently, she had honestly completely forgotten about their vacation plans. "Oh, that's wonderful!" she told him, finally. "No, that's really great! But, Junpei…the 22nd is in four days. That's not enough time for us to-!"

"Man, I know," said Junpei. "You'd better start packing, right? Girls take a long time to pack…but remember, we're going to stay in a Kirijo hotel, so it's not like it won't already have all the stuff we need. Aw, this is so exciting…a real vacation! Do you know how long it's been? I can't even remember the last time…"

He went on for a while longer before Minako finally managed to hang up the phone, assuring him that she'd get everything done as fast as she could so as to be ready to leave with him on the the morning of the 22nd. It felt strange, taking time off in the middle of a big murder case, but Dojima had made it very clear to Minako that her help wasn't exactly invaluable. Right now, a little bit of relaxation and some time with old friends might be exactly what she needed. She and Junpei hadn't really gotten to catch up with each other in a while either.

Before she left, however, she'd have to at least go thank Tohru, if onlyt o keep her promise that she'd be back later that day.

Making a mental note to go by the Velvet Room later that day, she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and prepared to tackle a disappointing day's work.

**Seven - December 18**

**Author's Note: **Several of you have written to me expressing some confusion about Minako's blindness. In order to hopefully clear that up, I have written a very personal piece called **Use Your Imagination**, which you can find on my profile page if you so desire. That will hopefully help answer your questions and help things make a little more sense. Please, do read it, and you have questions about it, I would love to have a chance to answer them! Thanks to everyone who made me realize that I needed to make that clearer and especially to **Meia42** for helping talk through the finer points of that with me. I've said it before and I mean it more each time, it's such a treat for me when you guys read and comment on my stories. I feel like I'm really learning something from all of this and that's thanks to all the help you're giving me! Please, continue to ask questions and express opinions!

Okay, so, WARNING: This chapter contains sex. No, actually, it does, and it's a slightly uncomfortable scene. It's at the end, so you can just skip over the last couple of paragraphs if you'd rather avoid it.

This is also the last chapter before things start going downhill fast. Shit will start hitting the fan at an alarming rate very soon! We will finally get our belovedly crazy, twisted, bitterly violent Adachi back!

…Hooray?

**Seven – December 18**

Minako had fully intended to let it go. She spent the whole day trying so hard not to think about Dojima's totally reasonable and legitimate rejection that she ended up being unable to think about anything else.

By the time she was ready to leave work, therefore, she was fighting off an overwhelming wave of self-righteous indignation. What did it matter, she asked herself, if she wasn't a member of the police force? Weren't there such things as civilian investigators? What about Yu, Yosuke, and all of their friends? What about Naoto Shirogane? Okay, well, maybe she didn't quite count, but…hadn't they all been a huge help in solving the case twoyears before? Why wasn't she allowed to make efforts at solving this new batch of murders?

In the back of her mind, of course, Minako knew that Dojima had been right. The rational part of her had to agree that she was probably sticking her neck out into places where it wasn't welcome, and she was unwelcome for very good reason, too. Still, the rational part of her was buried under a heap of frustrated pique when she picked up the station phone to call Nanako, and to ask her to meet up outside the Velvet Room.

"You're going to see Adachi-san, right?" asked Nanako, as soon as she saw Minako walking up the street through the shopping district.

Minako was so fire d up, she almost didn't remember to be ashamed of herself. "Yes," she said. "I'd like to, if that's all right."

Nanako giggled. "I tooold you," she said, in a sing-song little voice. Minako did her best not to react. There was absolutely no sense, she decided, in letting herself get baited by an eight year old. After all, she was supposed to be the mature one here.

Minako heard Nanako's footsteps disappear, presumably into the TV world. For some reason, Minako was extra impatient today. It seemed to take so many seconds longer than usual before she heard the footsteps reappear, this time accompanied by the sound of Tohru's lazy stride against the pavement.

"I got him!" announced Nanako triumphantly.

"So?" asked Tohru. "How'd it go?"

Minako bit her lip in frustration. "Badly," she said. "He wasn't interested in hearing what I had to say."

She had expected, or maybe just hoped that Tohru would be sympathetic, but when he answered her, he sounded almost bored. "Yeah," he said, "well, I could have told you that would happen. Dojima-san's usually pretty sure that he's right about everything. He probably wasn't gonna bother hearing you out when he already has a plan of action."

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" demanded Minako.

"Because," Tohru said, nonchalant as ever, "I figure maybe you and he have some things in common. Were you really gonna listen to me if I tried to tell you not to do it? No, you were gonna go off all heroic and do it anyway, so what was the point?"

Unfortunately, thought Minako, Tohru was probably right. Her shoulders sagged as she accepted that maybe she hadn't handled this very well.

"Um…" Nanako spoke up, sounding slightly uncomfortable. "Wait, are you guys talking about my dad?"

An awkward moment stretched in between them, as Minako realized that she and Tohru were criticizing Nanako's father right in front of her, after Nanako had just done them a favor.

"Nanako-chan," began Minako.

Tohru cut her off before she had a chance to find a way to end that sentence. "Yeah, we are," he said. "I bet you know more about it than anyone, right, Nanako-chan? Does Dojima-san give you a hard time a lot? You know, telling you what to do, and where to go, and how to behave?"

"Well, yeah," said Nanako, apparently puzzled. "He is my dad, so, that's kind of his job."

"Nah," retorted Tohru. "My dad never did any of that stuff. He figured I probably knew better for myself, and let me get away with whatever I wanted, as long as I didn't get bad grades and 'bring shame down on the family.'"

Nanako apparently had to think about that for a moment. After a considerate silence, she murmured, "Hmm…that's probably why you had to go to jail."

Minako heard Tohru's exclamation of surprise, and she couldn't help it. The innocent, unassuming way that Nanako had delivered the final blow was too much, and Minako burst out laughing. She laughed so hard she could barely breathe for a moment.

"Shut up," muttered Tohru, under his breath. "It's not that funny."

"No," insisted Minako, "no, it is really, really funny…"

It was a few seconds before she managed to get herself under control again, apparently having needed a good laugh after the long and frustrating day that she'd had at the station. When she had finally quieted down enough o hear anyone else over the sound of her own peals of laughter, Tohru was ready with his counter attack.

"You didn't have any parents either, right?" he asked her. "So, it's not like you've got quality family guidance to thank for where you are today."

That sobered Minako up quickly enough. "You're right," she replied. "My parents never did much to teach me how to behave. I suppose I had better luck than you did, at least, when it came to teaching myself."

Tohru didn't respond to that, and Minako had the satisfaction of realizing that she'd gotten one up on him.

"Um, hey," began Nanako. "Are you fighting? Couples shouldn't fight."

Tohru and Minako answered her at basically the same time.

"Nah, we're not fighting," Tohru assured her. "We're just messing around."

"We are not a couple!" insisted Minako.

"If you say so…" murmured Nanako, still uncertain. Minako wasn't sure which of the two of them Nanako was actually answering.

Later, after Nanako had waved her goodbyes and started off for home, Minako sat down on the pavement with a thoughtful little sigh. "I don't know though, "she murmured, more to herself than to Tohru. "It might have been nice to have parents who were proud of me. Do you ever talk to yours?"

"You're kidding, right?" asked Tohru. "My dad's been dead since I was a kid, and my mom…you think she'd ever want to hear from me again, now that she's seen my name all over the news for two years running?" He laughed bitterly. "I guess I was telling the truth, though, when I used to say that I'd be famous someday. Anyway, everybody thinks I'm dead. Makes it a lot easier. At least nobody's expecting me to send postcards anymore."

That, thought Minako, was probably true. After all, having a well-known serial killer for a son was definitely significantly more dishonorable than any number of Cs or Ds that could possibly come back on a report card. "I wonder what it's like for people like Yu and Yosuke," she mused. "They've got parents, and families…probably families who love and care about them, but they'll never be able to tell those families about all the stuff that goes on in their lives. Everything that's happened to us, everything that we've been through…it's not like we can tell anybody about it. At least I don't have anyone to hide things from. Maybe I should look at it that way."

"Yeah," agreed Tohru. "It's better not to have anybody to answer to."

Something about what Tohru said made Minako pause for thought, while unexpectedly appealing ideas played hesitantly through her brain. "Nobody to answer to.." she murmured. "That's probably it. That's what I'm doing wrong. I can still use the work that I've done on this murder case…I just can't hold myself answerable to Dojima-san. A real civilian investigator doesn't waste time with the police. She just takes matters into her own hands."

"How," wondered Tohru, "did you get that from what I said?"

Minako was about to tell him, when she heard the familiar grumbling rumble that only an empty stomach could make. "Hungry again?" she asked him.

"Starving," muttered Tohru, sounding slightly embarrassed. "Came out of nowhere, too, all of a sudden…"

Wondering what time it was, Minako wondered if she could get away with stopping for a bite to eat. She had told Junpei that she'd start packing right away, and for all that she wanted to reject his statement that women took a long time to get ready for a trip, she knew that she still had several loads of laundry to do before she could even think about loading up a suitcase.

Still, Iwatodai was four whole days away, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she, too, was starting to get hungry…

"Come on," she told him. "If we hurry, we can probably beat the dinner rush. If we get in and get out fast, nobody will see us."

"Yeah, fine," mumbled Tohru. "One of these days, I really have to ask that Igor guy if the Velvet Room takes deliveries…"

**Later that evening, after dinner…**

For one reason or another, it wasn't until several hours later that Adachi and Minako wandered back towards the Velvet Room through the now darkened streets of the Inaba shopping district.

"It's a good idea, though," Minako was insisting, for probably the seventh or eighth time. "I don't need Dojima-san's help, or anyone else's. If Yu and Yosuke can catch a crazy killer, then why can't I do it?"

"Didn't anyone ever tell you?" asked Adachi sarcastically, "that it's not nice to talk about a guy when he's standing right in front of you?"

Minako shook her head distractedly. "Not you," she said. "I mean, okay, they caught you, but I'm talking about this new murderer, the one who strangles women! What if one of my friends is next? What if I'm next?" Suddenly, she stopped walking, and her mouth fell open as she did, apparently, some rapid calculations in her head. "That's it," she said finally. "That's how I'll do it. I'm a seventeen year old girl. I'm the perfect bait to catch this guy."

"That's insane," muttered Adachi. "Look, this may have been a fun little game when you started out, but now you're talking like a crazy person. You're gonna get yourself killed, and then I'll have done all that crap in the Velvet Room and busted my ass for nothing."

He turned around to wait for Minako to catch up to him, and saw her smiling at him in the dark. "Nanako was the one who trapped you in the Velvet Room," she reminded him. "Not me."

"Okay," agreed Adachi, "but I would never been in there playing hero if it hadn't been for you."

They had reached the door to the Velvet Room by then, and Adachi lingered reluctantly outside of it, none too eager, as usual, to go back to the nauseating prison where he never needed to eat or sleep, but ended up just watching and waiting as the days crawled by.

"Um," said Minako suddenly.

Adachi raised an eyebrow at her. "What?" he asked.

"Well…" she murmured hesitantly. "I'm going home, but…I wouldn't mind if you'd come with me."

Adachi's breath froze abruptly in his lungs. Wait, what had she just said?

"There's a murderer out here, after all," she added, instantly dashing his suddenly revived hopes. "I'm not sure I want to be walking around alone…"

"I thought you just said you wanted to try to catch the guy?" insisted Adachi. "You were gonna use yourself as bait, remember?"

"Yeah," muttered Minako, "but, first I have to have a plan. Right now I don't have a plan. I mean, you know, sometime in the future, I could try that." She paused awkwardly for a moment, apparently embarrassed about her show of weakness, before adding quickly, "and I can't leave you out here by yourself, anyway. That's against the rules. There's a TV at my place you can use to get back in."

"So, let me get this straight," said Adachi. "You're afraid of getting attacked by a murderer, and so you're asking a murderer to walk you home."

"Sounds about right, yes," she agreed. "After all, who better than you to watch my back? You probably know just the kind of places that someone like you would strike from."

"Someone like me," growled Adachi, but Minako's little laugh told him that she'd been trying to get a rise out of him. Unwilling to let her bait him, he gave her an insincere, exasperated sigh. "Fine, whatever you want," he said. "Come on, hurry up."

Minako led him back, very carefully, through the now darkened streets of the shopping district.

"You know that phrase?" she asked, as they turned a corner and started into a neighborhood that Adachi didn't recognize, "This is kind of like that saying...how does it go? 'The blind leading the dead?'"

"I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be the 'the blind leading the blind,'" Adachi corrected her.

Minako shrugged. "Well, yeah, but I'm blind, and you, as far as everyone else knows, are dead, so it makes more sense that way."

They stopped in front of what Adachi could only assume was the door to Minako's house, and he found himself wondering absently how a seventeen year old office assistant like Minako could manage to have her own place like this. It was nicer than the house he and Hinata had lived in together when they'd been back in the city, and he was sure he'd been making more money back then than Minako was doing now.

"Well?" asked Minako, having already pushed open the front door. "Are you coming in?"

Adachi stared at her. There she went again, asking questions that he was just dying to misinterpret. "Uh…" was all he managed to say. His mind felt all confused. There was something very surreal about what was going on right now. His hands were heavy, and he couldn't seem to figure out what to do with them. How was she so good at turning him into some kind of inarticulate dumbass?

Suddenly, the face of Saki Konishi swam up in front of Adachi's eyes, and he could imagine very clearly the disgusted and horrified way she'd looked at him when he'd come on to her that day after the murder of Mayumi Yamano. It made him feel sick to his stomach.

"I'm out of here," he told Minako.

"The TV's in the living room," she said, disappearing through the door.

Following her inside, Adachi was almost disappointed to find that, yes, there was, in fact, a TV set next to the sofa. As he stood in front of it, preparing to go back to the Velvet Room, he turned and saw her still waiting behind him.

"So?" she said.

"So what?" he asked stupidly. He felt slow and detached. Thinking clearly was not getting any easier as the moments went by.

"You know what I'm asking," she told him, and even through her best attempt at confident bravado, Adachi could hear the waver in her voice.

"Is…that an invitation?" he asked.

"What do you think?" she retorted.

Shaking his head, Adachi took a step towards her, laughing a little under his breath. "No," he said, "we're not playing that game again."

Minako laughed too. "Why? Because you lost last time?"

"I'm…pretty sure I won," muttered Adachi. "Yeah, I definitely…."

She drew closer to him, and he went in to kiss her eagerly, but very carefully, unsure of exactly what he was afraid would happen. Maybe the floor would open up, and he'd fall through back into the Velvet Room, only to find Igor waiting for him there, staring him down with disapproval in his eyes, aghast at his inappropriate conduct against a former guest of the Velvet Room.

In the back of Adachi's mind, Igor's gaze suddenly twisted and warped, turning abruptly into the accusatory eyes of Mayumi Yamano, holding the same angry, disdainful expression she'd given him right before she'd fallen backwards forever into the TV.

"Stop it," he muttered. "Quit staring at me like that." He couldn't stand the feeling of his skin crawling as the demonically haunting faces of those women accused him from the recesses of something ugly underneath the surface of his brain.

"I can't even start staring at you," Minako reminded him. "Blind girl, remember?" I couldn't see you if I wanted to."

She leaned in and gave him a little kiss on the cheek, just below his right eye, and then another below the left. The innocence of the gesture caught him totally off guard. With one last shudder and gasp, Adachi's strained self restraint gave up on him. He wound his arms around her body and crushed her mouth to his, kissing her deeply, breathing her in and letting relief wash over him with every extra second that she didn't shove him away. She stood still and unresisting for a few moments, and then her fingers traced up along his collarbone and began to loosen his tie.

His heart started racing uncomfortably as he realized that he now had a problem. In order to start work on the shirt buttons, which he desperately wanted to do, he would have to release his grip, in which case she might pull away from him. Hesitantly, he relaxed one hand and removed it from Minako's waist, only for her to reach up and wrap her hands around the back of his neck while she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.

Adachi's fingers had probably never moved as fast in his life as they did getting that shirt undone and off of his shoulders. It hit the ground only moments before he pulled Minako back on to the sofa, which he only remembered was there when he stumbled into it after tripping over the sleeve of his abandoned shirt. Pulling her blouse off over her head, he lingered for a delicious moment over the stunning feeling of their bare skin meeting for the first time.

There wasn't any point in trying to make it upstairs. Adachi knew it wasn't going to happen. They spent the next few slow-motion moments tangled up in each other on the sofa, and Adachi lost track of time in the midst of being with her. It was the first time for him in years. He wasn't sure he could have stopped even if she'd asked him to, and was relieved as hell that she didn't.

When it was all over, she rested her head on his pounding chest, and then closed her eyes and relaxed against him. Adachi stared uncomprehendingly down at the naive, unquestioning look on her face, and felt something twist hard at the place where his heart was probably supposed to be.

Shit. He thought. Shit, shit, shit.

"Okay," he muttered to himself, so low that he didn't think she could hear him. "You win, blind girl. You win. I surrender."

**Eight - December 19**

**Author's Note: **The original plan for this chapter was much longer, but I think I'm going to break it into two chapters instead. The next one is pretty darn dark, so it'll be better standing on its own than attached directly to this one, anyway.

In this chapter, Adachi starts going mildly crazy. In the next chapter, he goes much more crazy! Those of you who have been begging me for crazier, less rational Adachi, rejoice! But don't get used to it. As always, I will continue to jerk my characters around mercilessly.

Also, we're going to be seeing some of the P3 cast again soon, when Minako goes to Iwatodai! Perhaps most notably, she'll be checking in with Shinjiro, as well as, of course, with Yukari and Fuuka. We'll get some good Junpei and Minako moments, too.

There will definitely be an update to this story tomorrow night. After that, I will probably take some time off on the weekend to work on my grad school finals. I know a lot of you are dealing with finals of various kinds right now...good luck! I'm cheering for you!

**Eight – December 19**

Minako woke up still scrunched up on the sofa. One of her arms had fallen sleep, and as she tried absently to massage some life back into it, she took stock of what was going on.

Tohru, she could tell, was obviously gone. There was no sign or sound of him anywhere, as far as she could sense. She was, she realized, not surprised, even if she was just a little bit disappointed. He had probably rushed off to meet his Velvet Room curfew, and, besides, it wasn't as though the two of them were really…

That was an interesting question. Minako sat up, and took a deep breath. What exactly were she and Tohru, now? It had been Minako, after all, who had told Nanako just last night that they were definitely not a couple. He was definitely not her "boyfriend." The word "boyfriend" was not one that she could ever imagine applying to Tohru. It just did not seem to fit him. Shinjiro, who had been devoted, awkwardly sweet, and even almost romantic at times, had been a boyfriend. Tohru was…a much older man with a criminal record that Minako had just spent the night with.

"Oh boy," she muttered aloud. "What am I turning myself into?" Maybe Junpei hadn't been wrong, she realized, when he'd remarked to Rise and Yosuke about how loose Minako seemed to be with the men in her life. Sure, he hadn't meant it that way, but it had stuck with her. If her own best friend thought of her that way, there must be some truth behind it. After last night, she couldn't argue the point. That had been a pretty unscrupulous thing to do. She knew she should feel dirty, and ashamed of herself, but she didn't.

After all, it had been wonderful. She wished she could have seen the look on his face when he reached out to hold her after she'd called him away from the TV. When he'd asked her not to look at him, he'd sounded so…so vulnerable. She'd wanted to hold him, to tell him that she wanted him, just so that she could erase that miserable note from his voice.

Maybe that was why she'd done it. She'd never, she was sure, intended to sleep with him when she'd asked him to walk her home. If she'd thought harder about it, she knew that she probably would have realized what it must have sounded like to him but…Minako had never been particularly good at that sort of thing. It hadn't been difficult to figure out how nervous he was when they'd finally gotten in, though. It was coming off of him like some kind of terrified aura. Minako had been surprised, almost touched by it. She hadn't thought of him as the type. After all, he was always so devil-may-care when he talked with her about serious things. She'd liked seeing the soft spot. It was endearing. That was, she felt, a very strange feeling to have about a man like Tohru, who was unpredictable, dangerous, and definitely a very bad life choice.

Abruptly, Minako realized that she had not heard her alarm go off. Was it still early in the morning, she wondered, or had she, by some horrible twist of bad luck, managed to sleep through her alarm? What time was it? How late was she to work?

All thoughts of Tohru temporarily abandoned, Minako scrambled, in a half-hopeful panic, for the shower.

**Later that day, in the Velvet Room…**

Adachi was rapidly running out of places to pace. He had been stalking wildly and dementedly around Magatsu Inaba for hours, trying to let off some steam, just begging for something to take his mind off of the amazing, exhausting turmoil it had become. Unfortunately, he didn't encounter a single shadow or obstacle of any kind. Apparently, even the shadows were aware that now was not a good time to mess with him.

Everything was disgustingly, horrible, beautifully, incredibly wrong. He could still feel her touch tantalizing him, driving him to distraction, and it somehow made him want to vomit and burst out laughing helplessly at the same time. He had it so bad it was physically painful. He didn't remember ever having had it this bad before. It was like an addiction, like a disease. It was crawling all over him. He wanted more of it, much more. The walls of his ornately upholstered psychological prison were closer and more suffocating than ever before. He couldn't be here. He had to be with her.

And that, realized a rational little corner of the back of his brain, will probably never happen again. He had probably blown everything. It might be over for good.

It had been so long since Adachi had really felt anything, anything except anger, bitterness, and disappointment that he'd fallen headlong into her all at once, and grabbed everything that she'd been willing to give him without bothering or caring enough to think about what might happen next. He was a smart guy, he knew that. He was supposed to be able to plan ahead, to figure out his opponent's weakness so that he could use it against her if he needed it.

This time, though, it was his weakness he'd stumbled into, not hers. She was a major Achilles' heel for him, and just thinking about the look on her face while she'd lain against him on the couch was enough to make his heart start beating way too fast for his health.

The worst part was, _she was seventeen. _Seventeen year old girls wanted men to sweep them off their feet, to be the dazzling, attractive hero from the romance novels their parents probably tried not to let them read. Seventeen year old girls had fantasies, and their fantasies rarely ever consisted of scary, ravenous, panting men with creepy visions of dead women in their heads, and an inability to control their own primitive urges.

Seventeen year olds girls wanted to be romanced by the person that he had been so many years ago, before Hinata, before Inaba. There wasn't any of that left in him now, except for a desperate, lingering wish that maybe he could pull together enough of it just to make her smile at him.

With very little left to do, and still so much nervous energy that he couldn't imagine sitting still, Adachi made his way back to the Velvet Room, where he found Igor still sitting there, still and composed as an ugly statue. Igor looked up when Adachi walked in, and gave him the disappointed, disapproving look that he'd come to expect from the man who he would absolutely never be forced to call "Master." Adachi was, after all his own master…or at least, he had been, until last night. Now he felt a great deal more like a pawn, and it wasn't necessarily a feeling he disliked. She could use him as much as she wanted, as long as she wanted to. He wanted her to want to.

Trapped again in his looping speculations about that girl, Adachi didn't even notice when Nanako walked in.

"Um…Adachi-san?" she asked."Uh oh, what happened? Did you and Minako have a fight, even after I told you not to?"

Adachi looked up at her, and opened his mouth to give her a clever rebuttal. Nothing came out. "Is she here?" he managed instead.

"Mmhmm…" Nanako looked really worried. "Maybe we should tell her that you can't come out today though. You should rest. You look sick. Your face is all pale."

Shaking his head, Adachi reached up to smooth back his hair, relieved, for the moment, that Minako couldn't see him. Nanako was probably right, and she was a very forgiving girl. If she said he looked terrible, it was probably pretty bad.

They walked out of the Velvet Room into the shopping district, and there she was, standing against the wall, holding her work bag and looking totally normal, as though nothing had happened to make her lose any sleep. For some reason, that bothered him. Why was she so cool in the face of this, while it was driving him crazy? That wasn't the way things were supposed to be. He was supposed to be the relaxed one. He was supposed to be in control.

"Minako," he said.

She turned towards his voice and smiled. "I think that's only the third time you've ever used my name," she said. "Glad to see me?"

"Wha-?" Adachi stammered. No way. She was teasing him. What the hell? There she was, totally calm, totally relaxed, making fun of him for wanting her. It infuriated him, and he loved it.

"What if I am?" he heard himself ask, and was relieved that he somehow sounded like himself, even if he wasn't feeling like it. "Why? Would you like that?"

Minako laughed. "I don't know," she admitted. "I'm actually not supposed to be here; I have some errands to do tonight. I just…figured I'd stop by. You know, on the way."

"Errands, huh?" asked Adachi. "What kind of errands?"

"Mostly shopping," said Minako. "I'm going on vacation next week, so I have to stop by a few different stores. It will probably take a while."

Shopping, thought Adachi, was expensive. Money was something there was no shortage of in the Velvet Room, especially after all the shadows he'd knocked out from sheer boredom. Men with money were attractive as hell, and every guy who'd once been broke like him knew it. Maybe this was his chance to save a little bit of face. "Let me help you with that," he said. "I've got some spare change. Where are we going?"

Minako just shook her head. "I," she told him, putting careful emphasis on the pronoun, "am going to Okina City to a high-end women's clothing store. You would have a hard time fitting in, there. I can't think of any disguise that wouldn't stand out."

"Let me pick something out for you, and it's worth the risk," insisted Adachi, grinning. "Besides, it's not like you can do it for yourself, right?"

"Thank you," said Minako firmly, "but I don't need your money, and I don't need your help."

"Oh, I can help!" piped up Nanako. Adachi blinked. He'd forgotten she was even there.

Minako just smiled. "It's okay, Nanako-chan," she insisted. "Honestly, I'll be fine. Go back home and check up on Yu for me, okay? Otherwise your dad might get worried again like he did yesterday."

Dutifully, although a bit reluctantly, Nanako headed for home, leaving Adachi and Minako alone.

"Then," asked Adachi quietly, "what do you need? Come on, give a guy a hint."

Minako started to look a little uncomfortable. "Are you trying to bribe me?" she asked. "Because that's…distinctly creepy."

"It's not bribery," insisted Adachi. "Come on, there's always something girls want. If it's not money, then what? Status? Fame? Hell, I live in a world that broadcasts itself on the TV. If you want to be a star, we can do that. I can get to pretty much anywhere in the world from in there, too. Tell me where you want to go. Anywhere. I'm serious. What do you want me to do?"

What had started off as a suave demonstration of what a neat guy Adachi was had begun turning rapidly into a desperate plea for her attention. He tried to cover by leaning nonchalantly against the nearby wall.

Minako bit her lip. "You have some of the strangest ideas about women," she told him. "I don't want anything from you. We're not even…"

For some reason, she didn't finish that sentence, and Adachi was weirdly glad.

"Will you walk me to the train station?" she asked instead, apparently giving up on the previous conversation. "We can go around the back so people aren't as likely to see us."

**Nine - December 19**

**Author's Note: **The Ides of March, huh? Okay, then let's have a murder!** AeroShylph**, this one's for you. Well, the ending is, anyway. The first part will probably just annoy you. Sorry about that.

As I said in the **Piecekeeping** update, there is a significant and pointed overlap in between that update, and this one. Something that happens in this chapter couldn't have happened without something that happened in the other one. It's easy to overlook, and if you blink, you'll miss it, but I'm curious to see who catches it…actually, if you can figure it out, I will write you a one-shot of your choice, featuring any character or pairing you want. How about that? See? It's been a while since we've played a game, this will be fun.

WARNING: Blood. Sappy romance. Violence. Death. Disturbing images. Confusing juxtapositions.

Also, I do not condone unhealthy, obsessive relationships. Let's all have fun reading my story, and then…don't date Adachi. Go out there and make good choices, okay?

**Nine – December 19**

Minako and Tohru walked side by side in silence for a while, weaving their way through back alleys as they headed for the train station.

What, she wondered, had all that been about? For a moment, there, she'd been starting to get angry. It had sounded as though Tohru thought she was some kind of…some kind of prostitute, or…

But, no, she told herself, that wasn't it. He hadn't meant anything like that. That was just her guilt rearing its ugly head again. No, this didn't have anything to do with her. He'd made it clear, before, that he had a problem with women. There was something about them he just didn't understand. That, of course, probably came from whatever problem he'd had with that girl he refused to tell her about, when she'd pressed him the other night at Shiroku. There was a lot of stuff inside him, she was beginning to realize, that she was a long way from understanding. His little outburst of apparently random bribery had probably, in his own slightly alarming way, been a sign that he cared about her.

And there, of course, was another interesting dilemma. Did he care about her? Was Tohru even the sort of person who cared about people? Did she want him to? He was usually so flippant with her, calling her that offensive nickname, and teasing her at every turn.

Then again, as she'd told Nanako not too long ago, boys usually made fun of the girls they liked the best. For some reason, Minako felt as though she was back in elementary school. It had been a lot like this. Awkward boys, uncomfortable conversations, learning how to feel about people for the first time…

Wait, wasn't Tohru almost thirty? How funny, thought Minako, that this usually confident, self-possessed older man was the one that was acting like a twelve year old. It made her want to laugh, and before she could catch herself, she did.

"What's so funny?" asked Tohru.

"Nothing, nothing," said Minako quickly, shaking her head. "Sorry, I was just thinking about something else." She decided to suit the word to the action and actually try to think about something else. There was no way she was going to get her head around this right now, anyway. It would have been better, she reflected, if there was somebody, anybody she could talk to about it…but the very idea of mentioning her, uh, relations with Tohru to any of her friends left her completely cold. The look she pictured on Yosuke's face was far from pretty. The laughter died immediately on her lips, and she swallowed hard.

"So, um," began Tohru. "Vacation, right? Vacations are fun. Where are you going?" He was working pretty hard to sound like his usual unconcerned self, Minako realized. There was still that hint of nervousness in his voice e that made her have to hide a smile.

On a whim, she found his hand, and slipped hers into it. He let out a little exclamation of surprise, but closed his hand convulsively around hers and held it there.

"I thought you said hand-holding wasn't your thing," she teased him.

"Yeah, well, I'll deal," he muttered. "Anyway, we'll be there in a minute."

Minako couldn't hear the sound of the train, and assumed that she was a few minutes early. There would be people, she knew, waiting on the platform, and they couldn't risk being seen. She tried pulling her hand out of Tohru's, but he, apparently, wasn't letting go.

"Tohru," she said.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." He dropped her hand suddenly, as though he'd just realized it was something disgusting that he didn't want any part of.

"Thanks for coming along," she told him. "Honestly, I feel safer not having to walk around alone these days."

"You feel safer with me," he said. "That's…something different. I don't get you. You're an idiot. It pisses me off. How can you be so naïve?"

Giving the lie to his words, he suddenly leaned in and kissed her. Maybe it was because it was dark, or maybe because he was so on edge, but he just missed her lips and ended up at the very corner of her mouth. Minako was charmed. She turned her head slightly to meet his lips, and felt his whole body relax into the kiss as he folded her into him.

"What the hell are you trying to do to me?" he muttered into her hair.

Minako wasn't sure how to respond to that. "I can stop," she told him.

"Mmmph," mumbled Tohru, pulling her in for another kiss. "No," he said, with a little laugh. "Definitely don't do that."

Finally, he released her, and Minako, still a little breathless, opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it again. Eventually, she said "I'm gonna go get on the train."

"Yeah," agreed Tohru. "Try not to have too much fun without me."

Aware that it was now time to walk away, Minako turned back in the direction of the train station, and tried to stop the world from spinning. She was beginning to get the impression that she might be in over her head, this time. This had started out as one date, just to feed Minako's curiosity as to what could have been. Now, it was turning into something that was frankly a little bit frightening. There was so much intensity in his voice and in the way he held her that it made her a bit light headed. What had she been trying to do to him? Nothing. She wasn't trying to do anything to anyone. This was just…this was just getting out of control.

And of course, thought Minako, she could stop any time she wanted to. The trouble was, she didn't really want to.

The closer she got to the platform, the more Minako was aware that everything around her was eerily quiet. Maybe, she thought, she was actually later than she'd expected to be. If she'd missed the last train, she'd be in trouble. After all, trying to get all of her shopping done tomorrow night wouldn't be a good idea, especially since she'd reserved that evening for packing, unless Dojima told her he had something else for her to do. She shouldn't, she knew, have wasted so much time back at the Velvet Room with Tohru and Nanako.

The silence was beginning to make her uncomfortable, and Minako began wondering just how far away Tohru had gone. Was he still there watching her? That, she admitted, would be creepy, but strangely comforting right now. If she really had missed the train, maybe she should start going back. There was no telling how long she'd be stuck out here waiting if the train wasn't actually going to come. She should have asked Tohru what time it was before she'd left him.

Suddenly, footsteps came walking up behind her, and Minako let out a little sigh of relief.

"Tohru?" she asked. "You know, this could almost be called stalking…remember when I told you that normal people don't-!"

She never finished the sentence. Before she got the next word out, there were rough, forceful hands around her mouth, thick-fingered hands that definitely did not belong to Tohru. She felt her head being forced backwards, and as she thrashed and kicked to try to free herself, something cool and soft slid around her neck, and then tightened with a spasmodic jerk, forcing the air out of her lungs in mid-yell.

Minako did her best not to panic. It wasn't easy. She could feel her lungs screaming for air as she stamped down hard on the foot of her attacker, and tried to ram him in the chest with her elbow at the same time. Weakened and distracted by the lack of air, her blows weren't enough, and although she did hear a grunt of anger, all that seemed to do was to make the noose tighter around her neck.

As the world began to quiet and still, she wondered perversely what Junpei would do when he found out that she wasn't going to be able to go to Iwatodai with him. Would he bring Rise? What would he tell the rest of SEES? How would Nanako and Yosuke get on in the Velvet Room?

Bang. A shot rang out, and Minako heard her attacker grunt in pain before she felt herself falling forward. Too shocked to catch herself in time, she hit the ground with a painful crack, and lay there stunned for a moment before she was even able to scramble to her feet.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Three more shots came in rapid succession. Someone was running towards her, feet pounding against the ground. No, she realized, they weren't pounding anymore. They were making a sort of slippery noise, as though striding through a puddle. Bang. The gun went off again. Bang. Bang. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, click.

Something hit the ground, hard, with a sickening sort of wet thud. Minako was too terrified to move. Then, the laughter started. It was shaky, nervous laughter, getting louder and more hysterical as the moments went by. Minako didn't want to recognize that voice, but she knew that she did. It wasn't his normal tone, but it was definitely, undeniably him.

"Tohru?" she whispered.

The world chose that horrible moment to flash back into visual splendor. Minako gasped as she suddenly saw, just as she had twice before, the amazingly bright and incomprehensible colors and lights of the real world all around her. Of all the times that she could possibly have chosen to be granted a second of sight, this seemed like a cruel one. Lying next to her on the ground was something that had once been a man. He was a large, stocky man, and the big, hairy hand that was splayed out just a foot from her told her very clearly that this was the person who'd been wrapping that thing around her throat and choking her.

His whole body was riddled with bullet holes, and there was blood pouring in rivers from his arms, legs, torso, and head. He was coated and bathed in his own blood. Standing behind him, still holding the smoking gun, was Tohru Adachi, his eyes glazed over, his form shaking with crazed, nervous laughter as wiped away some blood that had splattered onto his face.

The world went dark again, and the vision was gone, but Minako could still see that horrible picture imprinted starkly behind her eyes. She would never be able to forget that, as long as she lived.

"It's okay," Tohru stammered, in what sounded like someone else's impression of his voice. "I got him. He was…he was going to take you away from me."

She felt him reach for her, and instinctively she pulled away, sick her stomach at the idea of him touching her with those bloody hands. She'd seen that manic look on his face, so different from the way she'd always imagined him looking when she'd listened to his voice or let him hold her. This wasn't the man she knew. This was something else, something that had crawled up out of a combination of both of their bad dreams.

"Minako," he said.

The panic that had been threatening to overtake her ever since she'd been attacked finally got the better of her. She didn't stop to think about where she was going, or what she wanted to say.

Instead, she ran.

**Ten - December 20**

**Author's Note: **Well…you can't say I didn't warn you about this story getting dark..

I'm gonna do the **Piecekeeping** update either tonight or tomorrow morning, I promise. First, though, I really need to get out Adachi's head for a few minutes…it is not a very good place to be.

I'm going out for ice cream. See you in a few hours.

**Ten – December 20**

The next morning, Minako got out of bed the same way she did every day, and got ready to go to work. She wasn't sure what else to do. She couldn't remember how she'd gotten home the night before, or what time it had been when she'd finally tucked herself into bed. She'd been so scared and panicked and worried and stressed that the moment her head had touched the pillow, all the emotions had just started pouring out in a torrent of latent tears, and she'd cried herself mercifully to sleep.

Today, there was nothing left to do but to go to work. It felt strange, trying to put herself back together after the events of the night before. She wasn't sure how to act as though nothing had happened. Honestly he still couldn't be certain what exactly had happened. There was a mark around her neck where that man had tried to strangle her. She could feel it when she pressed her fingers into the skin. Worried that it might be visible to other people, Minako wrapped a scarf around it. It was the middle of winter, of course, so a scarf, she hoped, wouldn't be suspicious. All she had to do was to remember not to take it off.

The entire bus ride to work, she was edgy. Whenever someone's arm brushed hers, or she heard a voice a little too close to her ear, she would jump and scoot as far as she could in the opposite direction. Her nerves were about as taught as they had ever been.

When she arrived at the station, everyone seemed to be talking at once. Possibly because of the trouble she'd had sleeping, all the voices sounded louder than they should have been. Minako weeded her way through excited people to her desk.

"Good morning," said Dojima, sounding almost as tired as Minako felt.

"Morning, sir," she mumbled. There was a long moment of silence before she forced herself to ask the obvious question. "Why is everyone so excited? Has there been a break in the case?" Even if she already knew the answer, it would look terrible, she knew, if she didn't ask.

"Yeah, something like that," said Dojima. "They found another body last night, right on the train station steps."

"Really," said Minako, biting her lip. "That's terrible." She needed to try a little harder, she thought, to make this sound convincing. Her heart just wasn't in it. She didn't want to think about the train station. Every time she did, she knew she'd see it stained with blood.

Dojima, however, didn't appear to notice her distress. "Well, yes and no," he told her. "Looks like the guy they found at the station may have been the same guy who was strangling all those poor girls. Somebody put fifteen bullets in him. Damn, you should have seen the mess…"

Minako felt the bile rising in her throat. "So," she managed, "it's finally over, then."

"Course not," replied Dojima, with a long-suffering sigh. "Now we have to find whoever did this guy in…"

For the first time, that got Minako's full attention. "What?" she asked, temporarily forgetting about the miserable images that were planted in her head. "Why?"

Dojima sounded surprised. "What do you mean, why? Cause that's our job. What did you expect?"

"I…" Minako didn't know what she'd expected. "But, sir," she began again, "didn't the person who shot the murderer do us a favor? He might have saved countless lives! Who knows who the next victim might have been?" She almost made it all the way through that sentence without her voice wavering, but not quite.

Dojima paused a moment before answering that. "Look," he said, "I know what you mean. If it had been my daughter that bastard had hurt, I'd probably do the same goddamn thing, and no law on earth would have stopped me. I am the law, though. This whole department is. It's our job to find these people and take them down. Murder's murder, we can't have people talking justice into their own hands. It's dangerous. Violent crime is still crime, even if it's in the name of vengeance. You got that? Besides, we don't know anything yet. Maybe this guy got shot by somebody else he was working with. Maybe it's a full scale operation. That happens a lot in cases like these. You'll know that after you've been on the force for a while."

"Um…" Minako felt herself nodding in acquiescence, while the danger signals began hurtling through her mind. "Yes, of course. I understand." She swallowed hard. Had there been any evidence left at the scene? Had she dropped anything? What if they found her footprints, or her fingerprints? How would she manage to explain that?

And, said the little voice in the back of her mind that she was trying so hard to ignore, what about Tohru? Just thinking about him again made her skin crawl. She never wanted to see him again, not after what she'd seen on his face and heard in his voice at the station. All of the stories that Yosuke and Chie had told her, about the monster that Tohru Adachi really was came swimming back to haunt her as she remembered the look on his face and the tone in his voice as he'd wiped that blood off of his forehead.

He had, however, saved her life. There was no doubt that without him, she'd be dead right now. She couldn't let them catch him again, not for something that he'd done in her defense…if, of course, it had been in her defense. She couldn't help but imagine the sickening possibilities of what Tohru might have done to her if she'd been the one to defy him. If she'd refused him that day, when they'd been alone together in her living room, he might have…

But, no, she told herself. That was ridiculous. He cared about her. He wanted to protect her. That was why he'd done it.

"He was going to take you away from me," she remembered Tohru saying, as he stood there over the corpse. If Minako had tried to take herself away first, then…

"Won't be too hard though," remarked Dojima, interrupting Minako's disturbing inner monologue. "Guy must have been an amateur. We found his gun at the scene."

"His…gun?" squeaked Minako.

"Yeah," replied Dojima. "Got it in my desk drawer. We'll send it over to ballistics tomorrow. Probably has fingerprints all over it."

Minako took a deep breath. There was no way, she knew, that Tohru could possibly have been so careless. After all, he had been the one that told her that he knew better than anybody how not to get caught.

Then again, she reflected, there had been so much going on…and this hadn't been a planned crime, it had been spur-of-the-moment, almost panicky. It might just be possible that he hadn't been paying close enough attention to remember the gun. She certainly hadn't. She hadn't even thought about it until this very moment.

"Oh my god," she whispered. "What am I going to do?"

There was no question that she desperately needed help. Nanako was the only one who knew about what had gone on between her and Tohru, and there was no way that Minako was willing to let an eight year old girl get involved in this.

There was, of course, only one other person who could possibly understand the situation. She didn't really have a choice. Picking up the phone, she dialed a few numbers, and waited for it to finish ringing on the other end.

"Hello, Dojima residence," said Yu's voice on the line.

"Yu?" asked Minako, trying to keep her voice as level as she could. "Hey, it's Minako. Um, I can't really talk right now, but I was hoping that you might have some time later today. I'd…like to ask you something."

"Sure," said Yu. "No problem. I'll see you after work."

**Later that day, inside the TV World…**

Magatsu Inaba was awash in a cacophony of derision and scorn. That was one of the main problems with the TV world, thought Adachi, as he stood just outside a wall constructed of yellow, criss-crossing police tape, and listened to the voices made manifest by the inner workings of his mind. He couldn't be alone here. Everything inside his head was real, alive, and speaking to him. Every thought he had, every voice he remembered came hauntingly out of the woodwork.

"No…no, leave me alone!" Saki Konishi was screaming. "Get away from me, you pervert!"

"Take your hands off me…I'll scream. I warn you, I'll scream!" echoed Mayumi Yamano.

From somewhere else, Dojima was muttering, "Damnit, Adachi…just once, couldn't you do things right the first time? Why do I always have to follow around and clean up your mess?"

"What did you expect, Tohru?" asked Hinata, with tears and anger mingling in her voice. "You're no real use!"

Adachi's own voice, as if in answer, emanated out from the walls of his prison, insisting viciously, "Nobody cares about the truth…all they care about is what they want to believe."

His gun was gone. He couldn't decide if he'd left it at the scene, or if it had disappeared, not unlike his wallet, when he'd missed curfew and found himself magically transported back to the floor of the Velvet Room. There was no reason for him not to go. He should have gone, there was plenty of time. Instead he'd just stood there in the shadows of the train station, waiting for Minako to come back to him.

She hadn't come back, of course.

She was never coming back.

Somehow, in those few insane moments while that guy was bleeding out, Minako had looked up at him, and she'd seen him. He didn't understand how. He knew it was impossible, but that didn't matter. She'd looked up at his face, and for the first time that he could ever remember, her expression had changed, she'd opened her eyes and they'd focused on his. It was over in an instant, but the moment she'd really seen him, she'd hated him. He'd watched the hate take root, and the horror in her usually soft expression when she'd suddenly discovered who he really was.

She'd seen the truth. There wasn't anything left for either of them to try to believe.

"Thanks for coming along," came Minako's voice, as Adachi's mind and the world it had created continued to taunt him from all sides. "I feel safer, not having to walk around alone."

She had felt safer with him. For a moment, he'd been the one that she had turned to for help, her protector. When he'd stepped in to really protect her, though, it hadn't been what she wanted. It was just what he'd thought all along. She wanted a knight in shining armor, a stainless hero. She wasn't interested in reality. She wasn't interested in who he'd become.

"You can still start over," said Yu Narukami's voice unexpectedly into the silence.

That was too much. Yu's words just ended up sounding like deadpan mockery, another example of the naïve, unrealistic expectations that Adachi had been too worthless to meet.

"Heh," he muttered. "Wrong again."

Suddenly, the latent rage that had been pooling lazily up inside him broke through, and he threw himself against the wall, trying to tear it with his fingers. He wanted the voices to stop, to leave him alone. Somehow, before he knew it, he'd transferred his aggression from the wall to the sides of his own skull, trying to force the voices out of his head by raking his nails from his hairline to his cheekbone, relishing and craving the pain that shot through him as the blood began to pool around his fingers. He wanted to feel something, needed to feel something real.

His persona card fell out of his pocket and then Magatsu Izanagi was standing in front of him, towering over him, radiating emptiness.

"God…I hate the shit out of you," spat Adachi, staring up at the face of his persona.

Magatsu Izanagi smiled.

**Eleven - December 20**

**Author's Note: **I decided to stay up and finish this chapter, because I was afraid **Yuruya**'s head would explode if I didn't get it posted as soon as possible.

…No, honestly, I just really wanted to write more of it. But thank you to **Yuruya** for giving me a good excuse!

Anyway, I'm in the clear, since the next **Piecekeeping** update is December 20 as well, so it only makes sense that I finish the day over here first, before I start it over there…

I don't know why I even pretend that I'm going to sleep at night. Last night I updated at 2:00 AM. Really. I get up for work at 5:00 AM. Its' like I'm losing a game of insomniac chicken with myself…

**Eleven – December 20**

As soon as she could, Minako met Yu at the Dojima residence.

"Is Nanako here?" she asked quickly, as Yu closed the door behind her, and took her coat. "Dojima-san's staying late at the station today, I know…"

"Nanako went to a friend's house," explained Yu. "What's going on?"

By way of an answer, Minako unwound the scarf from her neck, and draped it over her shoulder. Yu's exclamation of surprise told her that she hadn't been wrong about the visible mark.

"Tell me," he demanded.

"Tohru…" began Minako hesitantly.

"He did this to you?" Yu asked quietly. He sounded disappointed, and oddly regretful. No one else, thought Minako, would have even bothered to be surprised by the idea that Tohru might have done something to hurt her. They would have just taken it for granted that he'd be out for her blood.

Yu's disappointment at the idea was exactly what Minako needed to hear. Suddenly, something inside her began to relax. The story got easier to tell. "No," she told him. "No, he didn't." Then she told him the truth.

Yu listened patiently while Minako recounted the tale of how she and Tohru had been meeting recently outside the Velvet Room, and how she'd begun encouraging him to help her solve the case. Yu, it seemed, was very familiar with the murders of the two young women that had taken place over the past month. He had not, however, heard about the third body. His careful silence made her a little bit uncomfortable as she explained what had happened the night before. Yu was always a good listener. She wished that, for once, he might interrupt or interject. At least that way she'd have some idea what he was thinking.

"So?" she asked him, when she'd finally finished pouring out as much as she had to tell. "What do you think?"

Yu was thoughtfully silent for another long moment. "I think," he told her eventually, "that you've done something that the rest of us couldn't do."

"What?" asked Minako, taken aback. What did that have to do with anything?

"You forced Adachi to admit that there really is a truth, a truth that has some meaning to him personally," Yu continued. "The truth is, he didn't want to let you die. You aren't meaningless. Your life matters. I'm impressed. I wasn't sure he'd ever let himself learn something like that. I spent most of a year trying to teach him…but I guess it took someone like you."

"That's…that's not the point," insisted Minako, slightly embarrassed. "What am I supposed to do?"

She could feel Yu's eyes on her, and was glad for once that she couldn't meet his gaze. "Are you going to let him die?" he asked. "If they catch him again, and can get him for another murder, they won't let him get away with life."

Minako knew that he was right. There was no way that they'd risk letting him escape a second time. "He saved my life," she said. "I can't let that happen. I have to protect him. It's…it's the right thing to do."

"And?" asked Yu.

Minako stopped. "And what?" she asked.

"Is that the only reason?" he insisted. Minako didn't say anything. She knew that her blush was getting worse. This really, she told herself angrily, wasn't the time to be having inappropriate girlish feelings.

Apparently sensing Minako's embarrassment, Yu relented. "Do you remember what I told you," he asked her, "maybe six months ago, when you came to find me here after the appearance of the rabbit shadow inside my mind? I told you that we aren't so different, Adachi and I."

"He's a coward," murmured Minako, remembering that conversation. "He's too weak to handle the power he's been given. He can't control it by himself."

"That's right," agreed Yu. "So, maybe he shouldn't have to do it alone. I never did. Neither did you. We took our strength from the people we love. We still do, even without our personas. You're doing it now, coming and talking to me about this. Maybe that's really where strength comes from. It was cruel of Izanami to give him that power. He didn't have anyone to protect him from it, not like we did. Maybe that's not the case anymore."

Minako swallowed hard. She took a deep breath. "I need your help," she told him, aware that it was an uncharacteristic plea. "I can't go back in there…with him."

Yu reached out and gave her a comforting little squeeze on the shoulder. "You're not alone either, remember?" he said.

**That night, in the TV world…**

"Adachi-san?" Nanako's timid voice broke in to Adachi's brooding. "Oh…what's…what's this place? This is scary…"

He looked up to see Nanako walking towards him, glancing around in terrified awe at the walls of Magatsu Inaba. How had she gotten in here? Had Igor sent her? What kind of an idiot would send an eight year old girl into a place like this?

"What do you want?" he muttered.

"C-can you come out?" asked Nanako.

For a brief, breathtaking moment, Adachi wondered if somehow, against all the hopes he wasn't bothering to have, that girl had come back.

"Big Bro wants to see you," finished Nanako. "He's outside."

That was a surprise, thought Adachi, even as the little tendrils of hope died instantly away. Narukami, huh? In the six months that Adachi had been trapped in the Velvet Room, that kid hadn't come to see him even once. Adachi had been sure that Yu would take the opportunity to chide him or lecture him, to crow over him for having lost not once, but twice Then again, it wasn't really in Yu's nature to make a big deal out of stuff like that. It was probably enough just to know that he'd gotten the better of Adachi. He wouldn't need to lord it over him. He was just too damn perfect for that.

So, then, Adachi asked himself, why would he be here now?

"Sure, whatever," he said, with a shrug. "Yeah, I'm coming."

Nanako was obviously relieved to get out of Magatsu Inaba, and Adachi couldn't help agreeing with her. At least once he'd left that place, the voices in his head stayed in his head. He couldn't hear them echoing off of the walls anymore.

They walked through the Velvet Room together, and out into the shopping district, where Yu was sitting in his wheelchair, waiting for them.

"Hello, Adachi-san," said Yu politely.

Adachi sneered at him. "Took you a while, huh?" he asked. "So, you're finally here. Why? Why now?"

"Why," echoed Yu calmly, "did you come back to Inaba?"

Adachi was not interested in playing questions. "Who the hell cares? In the end, it doesn't matter. I was locked up there, and now I'm' locked up here. It's all the same. Half the time I don't even notice the difference."

"That's not true," insisted Yu. "Anyway, I care. You know why I care. Minako told me that you came back here to look for me. Did you?"

"Heard you were dead," muttered Adachi. "I wanted to know if I'd won, after all. Apparently not. You're just annoyingly hard to kill."

Yu was quiet for a moment. "I don't think you wanted to win," he said, after a moment's reflection. "I think you wanted to be proved wrong. You were afraid, when you heard about my death, that maybe you h ad been right. Maybe there was nothing real to care about in the world. Maybe everything I stood for was a lie. You didn't want that to be true. You were looking for a way out. You still are."

"You," said Adachi, "are full of shit. It's this problem you have. You are constantly spouting shit. I'd work on that, if I were you."

"No," countered Yu, "you wouldn't. If you were me? You could have been me. You wish you'd been me."

"Tch." Adachi was pretty sure he'd had enough of this conversation. "Is that what you came here to say? Nice ego you've got there. It's come a long way since I saw you last. What, did somebody give you a medal, or something? 'Biggest dumbass?'"

For just a moment, Adachi thought he saw a flicker of annoyance on Yu's face. He was finally making an impact…not that it really mattered. Still, it was at least a little gratifying to see that the perfect hero of the hour could flinch when provoked.

"I'm trying to help," said Yu.

"Help what?" asked Adachi. "What do I need from you? What do I need from anybody? I've got a pretty nice set up here. The Velvet Room's not so bad. I can have anything I want, just by thinking about it. It's a place inside the mind, right? So…"

"Minako sent me," interrupted Yu.

Adachi forgot was he was talking about. So, he thought, she had been thinking about him.

"What does she want?" he asked, trying to sound like he didn't care. It didn't work. He cared. He cared so much it ached in his chest. Maybe, just maybe, Yu would say her name again. He liked hearing her name. It brutalized him in a very satisfying way.

"They found your gun at the scene," Yu was saying. "You have to stay here for a while until things quiet down. Don't go out." Suddenly Yu turned more aggressive and serious than he had been throughout the whole conversation. "Do not," he insisted carefully, "go anywhere with Nanako. Leave Nanako out of this. She doesn't need to be involved. Do you understand me?"

Adachi laughed. "Hey, my hands are tied," he reminded Yu bitterly. "I can't go anywhere she doesn't take me, remember? You talk to her about it, if you have a problem. She'll listen to you. You're her 'Big Bro' after all. She thinks you're some kind of god." Stopping for a moment, he added, "What do you mean, 'die down?' I know Dojima-san. He won't let it rest until he's found the guy who did this, and that guy is me. I'm not hiding forever. I'd rather just let him shoot me."

Yu shook his head. "That won't happen. Minako's taking care of it."

That honestly surprised Adachi. "She's doing what?" he asked.

**Meanwhile, at the police station…**

Late that night, after even Dojima had left the building, Minako crept back into the police station.

The security guard on night shift greeted her as she walked in. "Hey, staying late again? Jeez, Dojima-san really works you hard. I hope you get paid well for this."

Minako tried to smile around her nerves. "It's okay," she insisted. "I like having something to do. I really don't mind the extra work. Anyway, I'm just here to pick up some things. I left in a hurry this afternoon…forgot my house keys."

"Hah!" Minako heard the guard start to head off in the other direction. "All right, I won't keep you. Be safe on the way home, okay? There's still some crazy guy out there…although I guess, if he's killing the bad guys, it's not so bad, right? Still…"

As soon as the guard's footsteps drifted far enough away, Minako felt her way along the wall to Dojima's desk. Since she didn't know which drawer it was in, she had to force herself to open each one of them and run her hands along the contents. If it hadn't been for the winter gloves that she was wearing, she knew she would have suffered several paper cuts from all of the documents she had to finger as she searched for the one object she was after.

Of course, she didn't find it until she reached the bottom desk drawer. Straining her ears for any sign of the guard's return, Minako pulled the gun out of the bottom drawer, and then carefully took the cloth she'd prepared out of her pocket. Experienced as she was at using her fingers to find the notches and crevices in things, it didn't take Minako very long to wipe off every inch of the gun, and to place it gently and soundlessly back into the drawer.

Exhaling the breath that she'd been holding in, Minako tiptoed away from Dojima's desk. "I'm going home," she called to the security guard. "Good night!"

"Yeah, be safe," he called after her, as she left the station.

**Twelve - December 21 and 22**

**Author's Note: **Wow, let me just say that trying to go from writing tormented Adachi in **Messiah** to upbeat Nanako in **Piecekeeping** is doing very strange things to my head. Add the fact that I'm also trying to get into the headspace of Horatio in "Hamlet," and it's suddenly becoming clearer and clearer why I might be having trouble sleeping. They say that method acting can be bad for you because it puts you too close to the character. I wonder if that applies to writing as well…well, I hope not.

The solution to this is definitely NOT reading **Flowerchild777**'s new story. That story is really bone-chilling and makes an impression. You should probably go read it right now. Don't worry, this one isn't going anywhere. It'll be here when you get back.

Anyway, here's Junpei, thank goodness, to give us a brief respite from all of the angst. Oh, and I put a little present in this chapter for those of you who have been waiting for this. Not a big thing, but I know, it's overdue.

**Twelve – December 21/22**

The next day went by for Minako in a blur of hazy relief.

She walked into work that morning half expecting to be arrested on the spot. There was no way, she thought, that Dojima wouldn't realize what she'd done. After all, he was an experienced detective. She was very new to this whole criminal activity thing, unless she counted breaking into the school a few times back at Gekkoukan. The guard must have noticed what she was doing, or maybe Dojima would just know, based on some sign or trace that she'd unknowingly left behind.

Oddly enough, all Dojima said when she sat down to her desk was "Morning."

"Um…morning," said Minako.

A few moments of silence elapsed as Dojima hit a few keys on the keyboard and then grumbled under his breath.

"That gun you found…you're sending it out today, right?" asked Minako, tempting fate.

"Yup," said Dojima. She heard him pull open the desk drawer, probably the same one she'd been messing with the night before. "Good thing you reminded me…I'd better do that now."

That, it seemed, was that. There were no recriminations, no repercussions. Apparently, Minako had gotten away with it. She wasn't sure if she should be sorry or glad. Of course, it was fantastic that she wasn't going to be locked up. She was so relieved about that she felt almost faint. On the other hand, though, she had just covered up a murder, and it hadn't been that hard to do. What did that say about the efficacy of the Inaba police force?

The rest of the day went by without incident, and Minako left the station that afternoon with every intention of doing some unfortunately last minute shopping and packing for her trip to Iwatodai. She thought about calling Yu to ask him how things had gone in the Velvet Room, but somehow, she couldn't bring herself to do it.

If there was anything to worry about, he probably would have already let her know. She could trust him, she told herself. After all, that was why she'd gone to him for help in the first place. Maybe, now, she could put this whole thing behind her and move on.

At least, that was what she thought she wanted. When she curled up in bed that night, however, two different images of Tohru's face kept floating through the part of her mind that had served for so long as a substitute for her eyes. They were the two faces she'd really seen of him, on each of those separate occasions when the world had inexplicably granted her a moment of regained sight.

First, she saw him crouched on the floor, handcuffed and defeated, looking miserable, vulnerable, and alone. That was the man her heart went out to when she heard the nervous laughter in his voice, or felt his hands trembling as he touched her. Then, she saw him again, the way he'd looked only days before, after shooting her attacker mercilessly full of holes outside the train station. Crazed and exuberant, feeding off of the lust for the kill, with blood dripping down his forehead.

She wanted to dream about the first image she had of him, but inevitably her nightmares only showed her the second one. Sleep did not come easily to her, and she was tossing and turning in and out of those unwelcome dreams all night long.

The next morning, she woke up when someone knocked on the door.

"What, seriously?" asked Junpei, when Minako swung the door open, still in her pajamas. "You're not even up yet? Man, now we're gonna be late…"

"Sorry," mumbled Minako. "Couldn't sleep…must have missed my alarm…"

Junpei sighed. "Well, I guess I should have known. Girls always take forever to get ready anyway. Don't just stand there, go, go, go! I'm gonna wait in the car, unless you want me to help you get dressed."

Minako laughed. "No," she assured him, "I'm okay, thanks."

"Well," murmured Junpei wistfully, "you can't blame a guy for trying."

Minako knew that he was being a pig just to try and cheer her up. She smiled as she started throwing some clothes into a pile, and climbed into the shower.

When they finally did get on the road, Junpei seemed to be in very high spirits. He sang terribly along with the radio while they pulled out of Inaba and started speeding up to match the limits.

"You're in a good mood," remarked Minako, settling back against the passenger seat.

"You know I am," agreed Junpei. "Hey, this is gonna be great. We're on our way to stay in one of the best hotels in Japan! Man, Mitsuru-san says they've got everything there. There's even a pool, and a gym…"

Minako yawned. "Oh," she said teasingly. "I thought you were just excited to get to see all of our friends again, after so long."

"Yeah," agreed Junpei casually, "Sure, that too." Suddenly, he reached over and pulled on the end of Minako's scarf, forcing her to reach up hastily to hold it in place. "Don't you wanna take that off?" he asked. "Hey, are you cold in here? I can turn the heat up a bit."

"I'm fine," muttered Minako. She'd almost forgotten about the scarf. "Really, I just…I'm okay."

"Whatever," said Junpei, apparently unperturbed. "So, let me tell you about the plan. We're gonna drive up there today, spend a couple of days hanging out with everybody, then turn around on December 24 and bring them all back to Inaba with us!"

Minako was startled. "What?" she asked. "Why?"

"Uh…" Junpei seemed a little less confident about his answer to that. "Well, Yosuke really wanted me to. He's got some questions he wants to ask about the Velvet Room. Anyway, I think we should have a big Christmas party, just like last year. I even cleaned up the place a bit. It'll be a reunion! Aw, do you remember that cake Fuuka and the girls made the last time? Oh, I guess Shinjiro-san did most of the work, though."  
Shinjiro's name grated unpleasantly against Minako's sleep-deprived nerves. Junpei must have seen that on her face, because he sighed.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Guess I shouldn't bring up that stuff, huh?"

Minako shook her head. "No, you can," she said. "We're probably going to see him when we get there anyway. I…sort of want to see him. I want to know that he's doing all right."

"Yeah," said Junpei, "and Akihiko-san will be there too, right? Jeez, this is gonna be one hell of a trip." Suddenly, he started to sing. "Allllll my exes live in Iwatodaiiiiii…!"

"Wha…what are you singing?" asked Minako, trying not to wince.

Junpei laughed. "Nothing! I made it up! What, you don't like it?"

Thankfully, the singing didn't continue. Eventually, Junpei had to focus on the road, and as soon as he did, Minako let the movement of the car rock her back to a beneficently dreamless sleep.

She didn't wake up again until the jolting of the car startled her as it came to a stop. "Here we are!" crowed Junpei. "Man, you were out cold for hours. All the things I could have drawn on your face…there's an opportunity I'll never get back." He sighed.

Minako blinked. "We're…here already?" she asked. "I'm sorry…I was supposed to stay awake to keep you company."

"Eh," said Junpei, "you can make it up to me on the ride back. Looks like there are some people here to see us! Oh man, I feel kinda like a celebrity."

Minako wasn't entirely sure how that made sense, but she climbed out of the passenger side door and was almost immediately engulfed in a hug by a pair of small but powerful arms.

"Mina-chan!" squealed Yukari in delight. "I'm so happy to see you! I know it's only been a few months, but it feels like forever. Oh, wow, you look great! Have you been working out with Chie-chan? Hah, that'd whip anybody into shape."

"Minako-chan," murmured Fuuka warmly. "It's nice to see you. Did you have a pleasant trip? Did Junpei behave himself?"

"What, me?" interjected Junpei, feigning horror. "Hey, she wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me."

"That," Mitsuru informed them, "is probably the case. I hear that Minako has become quite the hard worker back in Inaba. No doubt she would have stayed on to complete her tasks if you hadn't forced her into this vacation."

"Good to see you too, Mitsuru-san," muttered Junpei. "Man, you never change. Oh, and hey! Ken! Did you get older or something? Yeah, you look it. What are you, now, fourteen? Jeez…now I'm starting to feel old."

"You're not old," remarked Ken in his quiet way. "Um…hey, Minako-san. How…how are you?"

Suddenly, a very heavy hand rested on Minako's arm. "I have been waiting for you for a long time," said a mechanical voice, laced with enthusiasm that shouldn't have been possible from something that wasn't human. "It is a great pleasure to see you again at last, Minako-chan."

"Aigis!" Minako was amazed. "I didn't know you'd be here! When did you come back to Iwatodai? How are you? What have you been doing?" For a brief moment, Minako was glad that Aigis hadn't come to visit her in Inaba, when the others had come to celebrate Minako's birthday with her six months ago. Somehow, she was sure that Yosuke would never be able to understand or accept what Aigis had done on Minako's behalf. He was having enough trouble coping with Junpei being around. Still, it was fantastic to find out that she was still doing well, and had reconnected with her old friends.

There was one voice, however, that Minako didn't hear. Biting her lip, she asked, "Wait, where's Akihiko? I was hoping that he'd-!"

From behind Minako came an exuberant bark, followed by Akihiko's familiar chuckle. "I'm here," he told her, reaching out to give her a friendly clap on the shoulder. "Look who else came to see you. Say hello, Koro-chan."

There was another bark, and then something wet began licking at Minako's face.

"Koromaru!" shouted Minako, throwing her arms around the dog. "I missed you, boy!"

The reunited friends chatted and laughed at each other as they all piled into the hotel. Junpei and Mitsuru went to handle the check in, while Yukari and Fuuka regaled Minako with stories of what had been happening recently in their lives.

"I'm so excited," Yukari was saying, "that you'll finally get to meet my husband. I've told him so much about you, it's like he knows you already. Maybe you and Stupei can come over tomorrow for lunch. Fuuka, you should come too!"

"Oh," murmured Fuuka regretfully, "I can't. I'm catering a Christmas party tomorrow night…I'll have to get ready."

Yukari made a disappointed noise. "Ugh," she said, "no fun. Can't Shinjiro do it without you? After all, it's not like he…"

She trailed off, and went silent. There was a very awkward moment, during which Minako could only imagine the two girls giving each other significant, panicky looks.

"So, Shinji is working for Fuuka now?" asked Minako. "That's wonderful. I was hoping he'd find something to do that really let him use his talents."

"Y-yeah," stammered Yukari, sounding a little relieved. "You, um…you haven't spoken to him since uh, since the two of you broke up, have you?"

Minako frowned. "No, I haven't," she admitted. "I'm glad he's doing well. Maybe he and I will have a chance to talk over the next couple of days. I'd like to settle things with him…and maybe to say that I'm sorry. I wish…I wish I'd treated him differently. He deserved better. I want him to know that."

Again, silence stretched out between them. Luckily, Junpei jumped in to save the moment.

"Hey, come on!" he said, pulling insistently on Minako's arm. "Our room's ready. We can dump our stuff, and then go try out the pool! Are you coming too, Yuka-tan? Aw, jeez, this is gonna be the best vacation ever…"

**Thirteen - December 22**

**Author's Note: **I've got another **Piecekeeping** update on the burner, but I don't think I'll get that out until tomorrow night…I really have to devote some extra time to my lines, tonight. I'm supposed to be off book by next week.

While I go off and study Horatio, here's some more **Messiah** that I wrote up on a whim while trapped in transit. It's a relatively happy one, for once. Seems odd that taking the story out of Inaba and bringing it back to Iwatodai makes the mood happier…that's very different from the way things were in the original games. Still, I suppose these characters have been through enough for a while. It's time for them to get something back. Remember, the **Piecekeeping** story is really all about closure, and the chance to move on. Minako might need that more than anybody else, so here's a little bit for her.

We'll return you to your regularly scheduled disturbing romantic angst very soon.

**Thirteen – December 22**

Apparently, Junpei hadn't been joking about the pool. Almost immediately after they'd found places for their suitcases, he started insisted that they go try it out. Minako, who had been forward thinking enough to bring her swimsuit, hadn't been swimming in a very long time, and she was surprised by how self conscious she was about putting her swimsuit on. She'd never actually worn it, after trying it on in the store. Everyone had just ended up being too busy to take the beach trip they'd talked about the previous summer, and even Minako wasn't either brave or foolish enough to decide to go swimming on her own, without the use of her eyes.

She was delighted, therefore, to find that the suit even still fit her.

"Dude," said Junpei, as she walked out into the hallway holding her towel against her chest. "This…this is just like Yakushima. Gorgeous girls in bathing suits…it's just a shame that we don't have the sun and the sand." He sighed. "I guess we'll have to wait for next year, huh? Oh well. At least that's something to look forward to."

They took the elevator down to the pool, where Minako could hear the voices of all of her friends, who were apparently still there waiting for them.

"Pool party!" announced Junpei.

"Um, we're not even staying at the hotel," Yukari said. "Are we… allowed to use the pool?"

"It won't be a problem," Mitsuru assured her.

"Are you sure that it is advisable for you to swim, Minako-chan?" asked Aigis solicitously. "Without being able to see, you may be vulnerable to sudden and unexpected attack."

Junpei chortled. "You bet she is," he said. "Ready, Mina-tan? In we go!"

Minako shrieked as Junpei grabbed her around the waist and cannon balled into the pool, pulling her underwater with him. She kicked frantically, managing to scramble to the surface just in time to hear the concerned murmurs of many of her friends.

"Hey, are you okay?" called Akihiko. "What the hell, Junpei? She could have hit her head or something."

"Stupei, you never think!" shouted Yukari. "Minako could get scared, being thrown in like that! She can't even see what's going on!"

"What?" asked Junpei. "Aw, come on, she's fine. You're fine, right? Well? You tell 'em."

Minako knew she should be touched by how much her friends worried about her safety. Still, even as their care for her made her smile, she bristled a bit at how protective they were being. She wasn't some little kid, after all. It had been almost two years since she'd gone blind, and she had gone through and overcome so much in the meantime. She didn't need to be coddled anymore.

"Okay," she said, turning in the direction of Junpei's voice. "Actually, I think instead of telling them, I'll show them…"

With a calculated leap out of the water, Minako threw herself at the place where she thought Junpei probably was. She wasn't wrong. He let out a yell as she landed on him and dunked him back under the water in the process.

"Wha-?" he managed, spluttering and spitting as he came back up for air.

"Got you that time," said Minako, grinning and wiping water off of her face. From the poolside, she could hear the laughter and approval of her friends.

One by one, all of them ended up getting into the water. Ken and Akihiko began doing laps together around the pool, while Mitsuru, Yukari, and Fuuka hung by the wall, talking amongst themselves. Aigis, as far as Minako could tell by listening, was playing with Koromaru, tossing a beach ball back and forth with him in the water.

"We are totally not supposed to have pets in the pool," Junpei remarked, laughing. "Good thing Mitsuru owns pretty much everything…otherwise we'd be in a lot of trouble for this."

Minako nodded. From every side, she could hear the sound of her friends having a great time, something that she hadn't realized just how much she'd missed during her time in Inaba. Of course, her new friends were wonderful, and she loved them all very much. Nothing, however, would ever quite be able to compare to the times she'd spent as a member of SEES, learning that the world and the friends she had in it were worth sacrificing herself to save.

"It's just like old times," she murmured thoughtfully. "For a moment there, I thought those times were over forever."

Junpei was quiet for a very long moment. Minako had almost begun wondering if he'd gone off to talk to one of the others, before she felt his hand on her arm.

"Let's get out," he said unexpectedly. "I forgot, there's something I want to do, now that we're here."

"Already?" asked Minako. "But…it feels like we just got in!"

"We can swim anytime," said Junpei. "Trust me, this is more important."

Uncertain what could be so "important" on their first vacation in two years, Minako nonetheless did as he asked and climbed out of the pool. She and Junpei went back up to the room to find their clothes, and when they were dressed again, Junpei led her back outside into the parking lot. She heard him pull open the door to the car.

"We can't leave," she insisted. "I thought you were the one who was so excited to spend time at the hotel. Everyone will want to know where we went, all of a sudden. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, nothing," said Junpei distractedly. "Nah, its all fine. Seriously, just trust me on this one. You're gonna like it, I promise."

They drove on together in silence, with Minako now totally confused as to their destination. Maybe, she thought, they were going to Paulownia mall, to try out Club Escapade again, now that Junpei, at least, was old enough to get in legally. That was something he'd always seemed to want to do back when they were in high school. Or maybe, instead, Junpei had just gotten hungry and they were heading out to one of their old haunts to have something to eat. Minako was almost glad that she couldn't see the streets and shops that she knew they must be passing on their way through the city. Somehow, just seeing those places in the back of her mind's eye made her start to choke up with emotions that she couldn't quite describe. It wasn't sadness. It wasn't happiness. Instead, it was both of those things, and neither of them, some place between her feelings that only moments of nostalgia ever seemed to be able to tap into.

"Hey, here we are," said Junpei, as he finally stopped the car. "Man, this place looks just the same as it always did."

Minako frowned. "Where are we?" she asked.

Junpei came around and opened the door for her. "I'll tell you in a minute," he said. "Here, you're gonna want to hold on to me for this one. There's stuff everywhere, and we're gonna have to do some stairs."

Minako listened to the sound of what she imagined was Junpei opening and closing a large, heavy door. She held his hand in order to let him guide her through what seemed like some kind of hallway, and eventually up several flights of stairs.

"Mitsuru-san had them leave it open for us today," he told her as they climbed. "You were saying earlier how she owns everything, right? That really comes in handy sometimes…"

"We'll have to thank her," agreed Minako. "It sounds like she put a lot of effort into this trip. That was very kind of her. She and I…haven't always been the best of friends recently. Everything that happened with Akihiko made things a bit awkward."

Junpei snorted. "Some things are more important than guys, I guess," he told her.

Minako smiled. "Somehow," she murmured, "that sounds very strange coming from you."

Abruptly, the stairs ended, and Minako stepped out onto some kind of floor or platform. She could feel the cold winter air all around her, and she shivered in it, unconsciously drawing a little closer to Junpei as she pulled her scarf tighter around her neck.

"So?" asked Junpei. Minako could hear the boyish eagerness in his voice. "Have you guessed where we are yet? Come on, give it a try."

Minako honestly had no idea. "We're…definitely outside, somewhere," she hazarded. "I can tell you that much. We're outside, but we're upstairs. How can that…?"

Suddenly, realization dawned. She sucked in a sharp breath, and heard Junpei's answering laugh. "Are we…are we at Gekkoukan?" she asked him. "We're on the roof of our high school, aren't we?"

"Correct," said Aigis' voice, from somewhere to Minako's left. "Very good, Minako-chan. Your prowess at determining your surroundings, even without your vision is commendable."

"Yes," agreed Fuuka's voice, sounding as though it was behind Minako. "It's good to see how well you're doing. We were…really worried about you. I'm so glad."

Slowly, Minako began to hear the arrival of more and more footsteps, until she could feel the warmth of multiple bodies occupying the spaces around her. Junpei's hand was still holding hers, and he squeezed it comfortingly as she kept moving her head back and forth, trying to take in every sensation at the same time.

"Fuuka? Aigis? You're both here?" she asked.

"We all are," murmured Akihiko.

"Yes," agreed Ken. "Welcome home, Minako-san."

"Welcome home!" exclaimed Yukari.

Minako could feel the tears welling up in her eyes, as she listened to the voices of her friends, all coming together in the very same place that she'd heard them for the last time so many years ago. They were all here together, all of the people whom she'd promised to protect with her life. They were okay, now. They were safe, they were happy, they were moving on with their lives, and somehow, magically, unexpectedly, miraculously, she was now here to share that wonderful future with them.

"Guys…" she whispered, the tears catching slightly in her voice. "I'm…I'm so happy…this is really it, isn't it? It's going to be all right now. It's finally over. We're all going to be all right."

"Course we are," muttered Junpei, and Minako was almost certain that she could hear some signs of emotion in his voice, too. "The gang's all back together again. This time it's for good, too. We're not gonna let anything happen to you. Not a damn thing."

As Minako stood there, bathed in the winter air and surrounded by the only family she'd ever care to have, she listened to the voice in the back of her mind silently telling Junpei and everyone else that she wasn't sorry. She didn't regret any of it. If she could go back and do it again, she would. She never, ever wanted to let anything happen to any of them, either. That was the promise she had made, and she still intended to keep it, no matter what happened. That's what friendship really as. That's what it meant to love someone.

It was only when she and Junpei were back in the car together, heading again for the hotel, that Minako remembered the conversation that she'd had with Yu, just days before she'd left Inaba for Iwatodai. They'd been talking about Tohru, and about the way he couldn't seem to pull together the strength to deal with the power of persona.

"Maybe he shouldn't have to do it alone," Yu had told her. "We took our strength from the people we love. Maybe that's really where strength comes from."

Yes, she thought. Yu was right. People were never meant to be alone. Dealing with the power of persona on her own would have been impossible. It would have broken her, would have torn her apart. It was only because of the friends that she'd made, and the love that she'd found that she'd been able to pull through and accomplish the things that she had done.

"Junpei," she said. "I need to go to the Velvet Room tomorrow."

"Huh?" asked Junpei. "What, seriously? In the middle of the trip? Are you feeling okay? You're not getting a headache, are you?"

Minako shook her head. "No, I'm fine," she assured him. "There's just something I have to do. Will you help me get in? I promise, it won't take too long."

There was a pause before Junpei answered. "Yeah, sure," he said. "But…you're not gonna do anything stupid, are you? Hey, what's this all about?"

Minako didn't say anything. It was too much for her to burden him with right now. Besides, he might not understand.

The difference was that now, she thought she did.

**Fourteen - December 23**

**Author's Note: **Oh man, I really don't feel good…wow. I wanted to write two chapters tonight, but…well, we'll see. Maybe I can still do it.

Anyway, now we are back to angsting again, just like I promised. The next chapter is full of exciting, epically plot-changing angst, though! Stay tuned!

Be patient, my favorite and beloved readers! I promise, we will see Shinji again, and soon, but there's some other business that has to get taken care of first.

**Fourteen – December 23**

Minako did not know what horrible, ungodly hour of the morning it was when she woke up to the sounds of Junpei's feet thudding against the floor. He should have been asleep in the next bed over, especially after the late night they'd spent in the hotel lounge with all the other former members of SEES. Instead, for some reason, he was up and walking around, and not doing it too quietly, either.

"Junpei?" she muttered blearily. "What's going on?"

The sound of his footsteps stopped. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Didn't mean to wake you up. It's nothing, go back to sleep."

Part of Minako wanted to do just that. Instead, trying to cover a yawn with one hand, she told him, "Yeah, that'd be great…maybe I could, if you'd stop shuffling around and making all that noise. Need me to read you a bedtime story?"

She expected him to laugh, or to fire back one of his supposedly witty retorts. Instead, he just sat in silence for a moment. "Sorry," he said again.

That brought Minako fully awake. "Hey," she asked, "What's up? You sound terrible." Swinging her legs over the end of the bed, she stood up and groped around for a bit until she found him, standing over by the window.

"I was just thinking," he mused, with an edge to his voice that Minako knew was the sound of him trying to hold back some feeling that he didn't want to admit to, "that maybe we're the lucky ones. You know, we got our happy ending, but…not everybody came with us. I wish…I wish everybody could have been there, last night."

"You're talking about Chidori," murmured Minako.

"Yeah…" Junpei sighed. "Guess I am."

Minako knew that Chidori and Junpei had moved to Inaba together only a year or so before she'd awoken and found herself at the train station there. Junpei had told her that Chidori had been killed in a car accident, but he'd never been too clear about the details. Minako hadn't pushed him for more information. At the time, it hadn't seemed like the polite thing to do.

Now, she wanted to know. "Why did she die?" she asked him.

"Told you," grunted Junpei. "Road accident."

"No," persisted d Minako. "That's 'how' she died. I want to know 'why' she died. Last year, you told me you weren't sure if it had really been an accident or not. Is that still true?"

"Maybe," muttered Junpei. "I wish it wasn't. I wish I knew. I thought she was happy with me, but…maybe that was all me, and not much her."

"I think you were the one bright spot in her world," Minako assured him.

Apparently, Junpei had to think about that for a moment. "You know," he mused, "I'm not sure about that. She was…she was so many different people, sometimes. Back when you knew her, she'd say crazy stuff about how nobody liked her and she didn't' have any friends, but…I never saw her try to make any friends. Then that whole Strega thing, like…like she didn't believe that life had enough meaning to take it seriously. I never got that. I don't get how somebody could think that way. What's more important than human life? I don't…I mean, there isn't' anything, right? Some days, she'd act like none of it mattered. Then…after you, uh…after you-!"

"I know," said Minako. "It's okay."

"Right." Junpei swallowed. "Anyway, after you knew her, she started changing. Caring about things, wanting things. One day, I came home and she was crying, cause she'd seen somebody's cat run over in the street. She was sitting there on the curb trying to bring it back to life, but, you know, she couldn't anymore. She was so upset about it…even if it was just a stupid cat. She wanted it to live so damn bad…I thought she wanted to live, too. I was sure about that."

Minako frowned. She hadn't known Chidori very well when they'd' both been alive. Mostly Chidori had been either an enemy, or a nuisance, taking up the SEES members time with her antics in the hospital. In the end, though, Minako owed Chidori something she'd never be able to forget. She owed Chidori Junpei's life.

"You gave her that," she told him. "You gave her back her power to care about things. She wanted to live for you, Junpei. You made her world a better place."

"Maybe," said Junpei. "But sometimes I think…what if it wasn't enough? What if I wasn't enough? What if it's my fault for not being-!"

"It's not," interrupted Minako. "Junpei, I'm sure it was an accident. Car accidents happen all the time, every day. You know that. I know that."

For some reason, when he spoke again, Junpei sounded like the older man that Minako so often and easily forgotten that he now was. "I want to, anyway," he said. "But I can't stop thinking about it. Especially now, when…when the rest of us are ready to move on, you know? Why didn't she get that chance? I bet if I'd had more time with her, maybe I could have made her want to stay."

They stood together at the window for a few more minutes, until Minako hazarded, "Do you want me to stay up with you for a while? We can talk. Maybe it'll help."

"Nah," insisted Junpei. "I'm just spoiling the mood. This is our vacation, right? We're supposed to be having a good time. Go back and get some beauty sleep. You probably need it anyway."

Minako knew that he was trying to make her laugh, and so she, dutifully, tried to laugh. Neither of them had their hearts in it.

"Okay," she told him. "Goodnight, Junpei."

In the end, though, she never did go back to bed. Instead, she waited with him by the window, in a show of silent solidarity, until he decided to give sleep another try.

**A few hours later, in the Velvet Room…**

Adachi watched with very little interest as the Amagi girl and that obnoxious tomboy Satonaka headed past him for the door to that led to Yu and Minako's minds.

"Hey, wasn't Junpei supposed to be on patrol today?" asked Chie. "I kinda had plans with my mom until Yosuke called and asked me to come here…"

"Junpei's on vacation in Iwatodai, with Minako-chan," Yukiko reminded her. "Yosuke must have made a mistake with the patrol schedule…he has been pretty distracted lately."

"Ohh, that's right!" said Chie. "Yeah, I totally forgot about that! I wonder how they're doing? Vacations are expensive for kids our age."

Adachi was just getting ready to return to his typical daily occupation of zoning out at the far wall, when Yukiko said something that, for once, got his full attention.

"Iwatodai…" she murmured. "Shinjiro-san went back to Iwatodai, didn't he? Do you think she'll see him there?"

Chie shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "I don't know, it's been six months since they broke up…maybe they're ready to talk things over again. They did seem really good together, before everything got so crazy…"

The two girls went through the door, and Adachi lost track of their voices as it slammed shut behind them. He knew that he was supposed, as the assistant, to follow them and make sure they didn't get eaten by shadows. Normally, he probably would have gone, just for the chance either to defeat a shadow, or for the satisfaction of watching them actually get attacked by one, but now he was too busy focusing on something else.

Shinjiro, huh? Hadn't that been the name of that guard guy that Minako used to sleep with? So, she was back in Iwatodai with him? He should have known. It was just the kind of thing that she probably would do, bouncing around from guy to guy. She'd done it before, with him, after all. She hadn't even waited until she'd ditched the other guy before she'd started coming on to him. Women never stayed single for long if they could find a willing sap to fawn all over them. Two was even better than one.

That was typical, he knew. It was the obvious thing for her to do. Then why, he wondered, was he so damn angry? There was a hot, choked up sort of feeling in his chest that made it harder to breathe.

"Heh." He gritted his teeth around a mirthless grin that turned into a grimace before it was finished with his face. Now, he was the one who was being a dumbass. She'd really had him going, and he'd almost let himself start believing her when she'd promised him she wasn't like all the others. He'd always said that she was good. In the end, though, she'd let him down, disappointed him like everyone else he'd ever met.

Maybe, he admitted grudgingly to himself, Yu had been right. Maybe when it was all over, he'd never really wanted to win the game. It was definitely his game this time, knowing that the one person he'd been uncertain about had proved him right in the end. There wasn't any truth worth fighting for. Not even she had managed to keep up that flimsy pretense. She wasn't going to fight for him, so why should he waste time fighting for her? Hell, he'd almost gotten himself killed for her.

That knowledge should have made it all the easier for him to let her go, but for some reason, he couldn't just stop thinking about it. Why couldn't she have tried a little harder to prove him wrong? He didn't' know what the next step was, now that there was no one left to call his bluff.

Just like him, the victory was empty.

**Meanwhile, in Iwatodai…**

As agreed, Junpei and Minako went over to Yukari's new house that afternoon, to have lunch with her and her husband, Kippei, who reminded Minako so much of Junpei that she found herself forced to stifle her laughter several times over the course of the afternoon.

"What's so funny?" asked Junpei, as they helped clear up the dishes after the meal. "You had that stupid look on your face the whole time you were eating."

"You didn't notice him?" asked Minako.

Junpei sounded nonplussed. "Notice who?" he asked.

Minako just smiled to herself. "Oh, it's nothing," she assured him. "Don't worry about it." That said, she was sure that she'd find the opportunity to tease Yukari about it later. After all, wasn't that what friends were really for?

It wasn't until after the lunch had all been cleared away, and Junpei was making friends with Kippei while watching TV on the sofa that Yukari put a hand on Minako's arm and drew her into the other room. "Listen," she said, "Um…I want to talk to you about something."

Minako frowned. "What is it?" she asked. "You sound…so serious. Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, um…" Yukari didn't seem to know quite how to begin. "Minako, do you remember yesterday, when we all came to meet you at the hotel and you and Fuuka and I were talking about Shinjiro-san?"

"Of course." Minako nodded.

"Did you…notice anything weirdabout Fuuka?" asked Yukari hesitantly.

Oh, thought Minako. So, it hadn't been just her imagination. She had at the time, noticed that Fuuka seemed strangely uncomfortable about the topic of Minako and Shinjiro. Then, she'd assumed that it was just the natural awkwardness that came with talking about a recent breakup, but now…now, she started to wonder if maybe something else was going on.

"Oh," she said, nodding. "I see. So, Fuuka and Shinjiro…"

"No!" Yukari was emphatic." No, no, it's not like that. Fuuka's just…" Yukari stopped, and sighed. "I'm really not supposed to tell you about this. I mean, Fuuka's my friend, but you're…you're you. It just doesn't seem fair, keeping you in the dark. Minako, Fuuka has a thing for Shinjiro-san. She's always had a little crush on him, ever since Gekkoukan. We didn't' really know that anything was going on between the two of you, but he was always so distant, and you were the only girl he really spent any time with, so…she just never made the effort. Now that they're working together, and you've left him for somebody else, she was wondering if-!"

"I haven't," interjected Minako sharply. "I didn't, I mean…there isn't anybody else, not really. I t was just a mistake, what happened with me and that other guy. It wasn't about leaving Shinji for someone else."

Yukari didn't say anything for a moment. "So," she asked eventually, "you're…gonna try to get him back?"

Minako didn't have a good answer to that. She wondered, for a moment, if she'd even really thought about it. There had always sort of been the understanding that if she wanted Shinjiro, she would come back to him, and they'd…they'd what? Pick up where they left off? Where exactly had they left off? It didn't really work that way. Minako didn't know if that was what she'd been expecting or hoping to do.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I just want to see him. Maybe that will help."

"Okay," said Yukari. "Well, anyway, I thought you should know about it, that's all. Ugh, please don't tell her I told you. She'd be so mad…"

Minako left the house that day feeling very, very confused. The idea of Fuuka and Shinjiro together made her upset, but she wasn't sure why. It wasn't that she didn't think Fuuka had the right to be with someone like Shinjiro, and Minako had, even she had to admit, really given up her chance to make him as happy as she could.

"So, where to next?" asked Junpei, as they drove away from Yukari and Kippei, who were still standing and waving in the driveway.

Minako bit her lip. "Feel like doing some shopping?" she asked.

Junpei let out a long-suffering sigh. "Women," he muttered, "always thinking about shopping." Even as he said it, though, she felt him turn the car around to head towards Paulownia mall.

**Fifteen - December 23**

**Author's Note: **WARNING: This one is genuinely a bit sad. I mean, not, like devastating, or anything, but it was kind of hard for me to write. Still, you know me, I can't stray too far from the script or we get the same kind of panic that we did at the end of **Bondswoman**, and we can't have that again. So, because it was in the outline, here is a difficult scene. Man, I like both of these pairings, and I don't want to have to choose! Someday, I'll have to write another story featuring this pairing instead…

Sorry to leave you on this note, tonight, but I promise that the next **Piecekeeping** update tomorrow will cheer you up!

**Fifteen – December 23**

"Wait," said Junpei, as he and Minako walked together into Paulownia mall, "Are you serious? Is this why we're here?"

Minako frowned. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "Is what why we're here?"

Junpei sighed heavily. "Right," he said, "You can't see it. We're standing in the mall, right? So, looks like Chagall's closed, and where it used to be, right in front of us, is this big sign. You wanna know what the sign says?"

Minako waited expectantly.

"It says," he told her, "'Yamagishi Catering Services, grand opening.'"

"Oh!" Minako was honestly surprised. She hadn't been aware that Fuuka and Shinjiro had their business headquarters in Paulownia mall. No one had told her, and she hadn't thought to ask. Considering that she and Yukari had only just now been talking about Fuuka and Shinjiro, this certainly did seem like an odd coincidence. She could understand why Junpei thought this was an intentional visit.

"Really," she assured him, "I just wanted to look around. You know, for old time's sake. We spent a lot of weekends here…evenings too, now that I think about it."

"Yeah," agreed Junpei. "Yeah, we sure did. Kinda weird, being back here now. Makes me feel…old."

Minako laughed. "Good," she said. "Now, if you'd only start acting like it…"

Junpei swatted her shoulder with one hand. "Whatever," he said. "I'll never lose my youthful, boyish charm. I'm the perfect combination of boy and man. Don't try to change me, Mina-tan."

Minako just raised her eyebrows. "So, I guess we're not going for a cup of coffee," she said, pointedly changing the subject. "Wanna have a try at the arcade? There is that one pinball game that you still never managed to beat me at."

She expected Junpei to jump at the chance to finally put down his long-time pinball rival, but instead, he was thoughtfully quiet for a moment. Finally, he asked her, "Aren't you gonna go see him?"

"See who?" asked Minako.

Junpei snorted. "Yeah, like you don't know. Look, you've been talking about having a chance to talk things over with Shinjiro-san since we started planning this trip. Now he's pretty much right in front of you, and you're not gonna do anything about it? Don't tell me you're chicken."

Minako bristled slightly. "It's nothing like that," she began, "it's just…" She wasn't really sure what was going on in her head. Now that she was finally here, she couldn't figure out just what exactly she wanted to tell Shinjiro, especially after that conversation with Yukari, and her new doubts about Fuuka.

"Go on," insisted Junpei, just a little more gently than he usually did. "If it gets ugly, I'll come in and save you. Then you can watch me whoop your ass at pinball."

"You'll never beat me," muttered Minako, as she listened to Junpei's footsteps moving away from her, leaving her there alone. He'd said that the catering place was right in front of her, so she hesitantly took a few steps forward until a friendly, if slightly strained female voice greeted her.

"Hello, welcome to Yamagishi Catering," said the voice. "How can we help you today?"

"Um," replied Minako, her voice coming out just a little softer and squeakier than she'd expected it to, "M-my name's Minako Arisato…I'm an old friend of Mr. Aragaki's. Is he here?"

There was a brief pause, as whomever Minako was speaking to apparently took a moment to size her up. "Mr. Aragaki," she began, "is in the middle of preparing for an event. I'd be happy to let him know that you came by, or to leave him a message if you'd like him to get in touch with you, but at the moment he's-!"

"Minako?" asked Shinjiro's voice in surprise, from somewhere beyond where the receptionist and Minako were talking. "What are you doing here?"

Good question, thought Minako. The familiar sound of his voice made heart ache for a moment. Once upon a time, that had been the first thing that she'd woken up to every morning. "I…came to see you," she managed, lamely. "Can I come in? Are you busy? I can come back later."

"Now's fine," said Shinjiro. "Here." She heard his footsteps coming towards her, and then felt his strong hand on he arm, guiding her forward. "This way."

They walked together away from the receptionist, and back into some inner room. Shinjiro closed the door behind them.

"How are you, Shinji?" asked Minako. "I would say you look great, but, um…" She tried to force a laugh, but it came out more of a hoarse sort or nervous squeak.

Shinjiro didn't say anything. She could feel his eyes on her.

"Why'd you come?" he asked eventually. There was a coldness in his voice that made Minako want to give up and run away.

"Junpei and I are on vacation," she told him. "We…we wanted to come and see our SEES friends in Iwatodai, so I…" she stopped. "You're one of my closest-!"

"Don't," interrupted Shinjiro quickly. "Don't say that shit to me. If that's all you came here to say, then…just go. I don't need to hear it."

Minako still didn't know what she really had come to say. There were so many feelings she hadn't ever had the chance to put into words, and others that hadn't even ever become fully-fledged thoughts in her own conflicted brain. One thing, though, she knew that she had to tell him, no matter what he did or didn't want to hear from her. There was something she owed Shinjiro that she couldn't live with herself if she didn't give him now, while she had the opportunity.

"Shinji, I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so, so sorry. I didn't treat you the way I wanted to treat you. I wasn't the person either of us wanted me to be. You deserved better. You still do."

"Yeah, well…I don't know who I wanted you to be," muttered Shinjiro. "Just somebody I didn't have to lose this time, I guess. Didn't end up working out like that."

Minako wanted to respond to that, but something about the way he'd phrased it made her pause and think. What had he said? He'd wanted someone he didn't have to lose? Yes, she thought, that actually made sense, now that she was turning it around in her mind. That had been exactly the reason why she'd struggled so much with Shinjiro, with his overprotective nature and his need to keep her as close to him as he could. He wasn't just looking for a girlfriend, or even someone to love. He wanted the girl he'd lost the first time, only this time, he didn't want to lose her. That was the main thing he thought about when he looked at her. The first time, she'd gotten away. He couldn't get past the idea that she might get away again. He couldn't move on from that to create something that they could really share, together.

"We have to move on from what happened at Gekkoukan," she tried. "We can't dwell on that and fixate on that for the rest of our lives."

Shinjiro snorted. "That's not so easy," he said. "It was my life. It was the worst part of my life. It was never a part of yours, Minako. You were…you were already gone, by the time we started to miss you. You wouldn't get it."

Shocked, Minako just opened her mouth in silence for a moment. "I…I wouldn't get it? I wouldn't…Shinji, I was the one that died! How could I not-?"

"Yeah," agreed Shinjiro. "That's right. You weren't the one who had to live through it."

Minako took a long, deep breath. Those sounded so much like the same words she'd said to him, about his own time in the hospital, not long after she'd awoken from the Seal. It was like listening to an echo of her own thoughts, thoughts that she'd already worked so hard to overcome.

Just being here with Shinjiro, whom even now she knew she cared for more than almost any other man in the world, made the magical events of the day before feel as though they'd never happened. All of the comfort and peace she'd felt when she'd finally stood up there, on that roof, with so many of her SEES friends…it all melted away, and left her right back at the beginning, still grieving over the loss of someone she might have become.

"I can't do this forever," she told him, almost pleading.

"I can't do anything else," he retorted. "I told you, there's never gonna be anyone else for me. There can't be. Everything that happened to you, that's all a part of me now. It's most of me."

"I…" began Minako, but she was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Fuuka's voice broke through the tension that was now so thick Minako was sure she could reach out and touch it.

"Shinjiro-san?" called Fuuka. "Do you have those menus? I can't find them anywhere…oh! Minako-chan!"

For the first time, Minako thought, really thought about Fuuka and Shinjiro. She didn't like it, that was for sure. Even now, Shinjiro was her man, the man she'd spent so long intending to spend the rest of her happy, successful, unburdened life with. She'd wanted to live in that house with him and turn their lives into something that Gekkoukan and the Great Seal could never taint or color with the kind of misery and madness that it had tried so hard to impose upon her life. She had the right to that kind of life, but…in the end, so did he. He'd never be able to have it with her, but with Fuuka…maybe there was still a chance, for him at least. Fuuka hadn't been the Great Seal. Fuuka hadn't tormented him for years. Maybe she might really be able to make him happy.

"I don't believe that," she told him. "I don't believe that you can't do anything else. There's…there's other things out there, for you. I love you, Shinji, I…I don't want you to be like this. You have to try, for us. Or…not for us. For you."

"Not for us," echoed Shinjiro quietly. "I want it for us."

Minako wanted it too, more than she'd even known she wanted it until this moment. It was so easy to forget how important something was, she realized, until it finally slipped away from her. There wasn't going to be any happy ending with Shinjiro. If he was going to get any kind of happy ending at all, she'd have to let go of him first.

"Goodbye, Shinji," she started to say. "I…I hope I see you again someday. I hope that's something you want, too."

"Yeah," mumbled Shinjiro hoarsely. "Yeah…I want it already. Do you remember what I said to you, up on the rooftop that day?" He paused, then added, "Course not…you were barely even awake, then. Told you I was glad I met you. I was. That's still true. You changed my life."

Minako wondered if she'd managed to change it for the better, or for the worse. Turning on her heel, she ignored the tears that were beginning to build up in her eyes. She didn't care. It was okay if he saw her cry. It wouldn't be the first time, even if it was the last.

"Wait," said Shinjiro, and Minako felt herself stop in her tracks. "There's something I need to know," he said. "That guy, that…that guy you were kissing. Tell me he didn't mean anything to you. Tell me it was just a mistake. I want to hear it again."

Six months ago, Minako knew, she would have promised him that yes, he was right, Tohru wasn't anything to her except for a terrible, shadow-induced mistake. Even as she opened her mouth to say it, however, a little ripple of Tohru's laughter floated across Mianko's mind. It was his sincere, teasing, nervous laugh, the one that made him feel human to her, rather than the vicious, hysterical laughter that she'd heard after the incident at the train station. Whomever he was deep down in there somewhere, it meant something to her now, even if she wasn't sure exactly what that was.

"I wish I could," she told Shinjiro, and she meant every word of it as she walked back out of the store and into the mall.

**Sixteen - December 23**

**Author's Note: **My only thoughts after completing my fourth or fifth re-write of this chapter…

I am a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad writer. Argh! Grumpy, disappointed in this chapter.

They had to do surgery to save my foot. I am going to detach my shiny new surgical boot and curl up in the corner and feel sorry for myself…

**Sixteen – December 23**

Junpei was already there and waiting for her when Minako walked out of Yamagishi catering. She knew that he could see the tears running down her face.

He didn't run to her, or put his arm around her, or beg her to tell him what had happened and why she was so upset. They'd both known that this was the likely result as soon as she walked into that store.

"Okay," said Junpei. "I think its pinball time."

Minako started to laugh, but it came out as more of a half-sob. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No, not right now. I…I have to finish something. I have to do it now, while I'm ready, before I change my mind. I have to see him."

"See him?" Junpei sounded confused. "Didn't you just…what were you doing in there?"

"No," muttered Minako, "Not Shinji. I have to see-!" She paused, frowning. "Junpei, can you get me into the TV world?"

"Now?" Junpei asked her, sounding a little worried, despite himself. "What, right now? Mina-tan, you're um…you're crying. You wanna go in there while you're sniveling like that? This is not a good idea. Let's go have some fun, relax, get ourselves something to eat…maybe when you're feeling a little better, then we can-!"

"No!" Minako realized that her voice was now coming louder and more forcefully than she'd intended. "Junpei, it has to be now. I won't be able to make myself do it again later, when I'm feeling better. Please. Please help me."

Junpei sighed. "You're some kinda crazy masochist, you know that?" he asked. "I don't know what this is all about, but I'm telling you right now that I don't like it."

"So…" murmured Minako, disappointed, "then, you won't help me."

"What the hell gave you that idea?" he grumbled. "Come on. Let's go. We gotta find a damn TV…pretty sure the arcade has one. Are you sure you don't wanna play pinball instead? Maybe I'll even let you win this time…"

He took her by the arm and guided her over to the arcade. "Yeah, I was right," he said. "Here we go. All right, hold on tight, we're going in."

Minako felt the dizzy fuzziness as Junpei pulled her through the monitor and into the TV World. Then she could feel the ground beneath her again, as well as Junpei's hand still clutching hers. Together, they turned towards the one constant in the TV world – the entrance to the Velvet Room.

"Can you go into the Velvet Room?" she asked him. "I need you to bring To-I mean, Adachi out here to me. I need to speak to him."

Junpei made a disgruntled noise. Minako could imagine the irritated look on his face. "Why?" he asked. "Why now? What did Shinjiro-san say to you that makes you wanna go and have a chat with some murderer you used to make out with? You're not getting that desperate, are you? Look, there are other guys in the world, okay? Shinjiro-san isn't, like, the last one you'll ever meet."

"Junpei, please!" Minako begged him.

"Fine," growled Junpei. He muttered something under his breath as Minako heard him open the door and disappear into the Velvet Room. It sounded something like "Can't believe I'm even doing this right now…ugh, women."

A series of what seemed like very long moments passed by before Minako heard Junpei return.

"He's not in there," he told her. "Can we go now? Even Igor doesn't know where he is. I guess he wanders off a lot…some assistant, huh?"

Minako, unsure whether she should be disappointed or relieved, was about to grudgingly agree that her only option was to leave and come back later, when she heard what sounded like a gunshot from somewhere a ways behind her.

"Huh?" asked Junpei. "What was that?"

Minako just nodded. "I know where he is," she said. "I'm going. Wait here for me."

Junpei suddenly took a hold on Minako's arm again. "No way, not a chance," he told her. "You are not going out there by yourself. That's crazy. You're crazy, and we're leaving."

Minako turned her fiercest, most determined, defiant expression in what she hoped was Junpei's direction. "I," she informed him carefully, "am going by myself. You cannot try to stop me. I have things I need to do. I will see you later."

Before he had a chance to argue with her, Minako hurried off in the direction where the gunshot had come from.

She wasn't sure exactly where she was going, as she'd never had much chance to get to know or learn to navigate the TV World, even when she'd had her eyesight. Still, a continued barrage of what sounded like discharged bullets gave her a reasonable idea that she was going in the right direction. The farther she went, the closer the sounds became, until the whole atmosphere around her changed, and she found herself in an environment that was eerily, disturbingly quiet, except for the occasional blast of bullets. There was something creepy about this place, something unwelcoming. It sent a little chill down her spine, just being there.

"Tohru?" she called. "Tohru, where are you?"

Abruptly, the shots stopped firing. There was another moment of long, alarming silence. Then Minako heard those familiar, lazy footsteps coming closer to her.

"What the hell are you doing here?" asked Tohru. There was a sneer in his voice, and the face she pictured in her mind when she thought of him wasn't the one she wanted to see. "Get out. This place isn't for you. How'd you get here by yourself, anyway? You could have gotten killed."

There was something that felt almost insincere about the way he said that. Maybe, she thought, he would have liked to see her get killed. Maybe that would have amused him. Minako tried not to let that thought upset her. "I can see you've got a new gun," she said instead.

"Yeah," agreed Tohru. "I like guns. Like I said, that's the only reason I even joined the police. I wanted them to let me shoot a gun. It looks good on me, doesn't it? Oh, but I guess you wouldn't know. Oh well. Trust me, it's a good look." Again, he fired. Minako heard the bullet bounce off of the wall and clatter to the ground. What, she wondered, was this place, anyway?

"Tohru," she said. "I wanted to tell you-!"

"How's your boyfriend?" asked Tohru conversationally, interrupting her as though he hadn't even heard what she'd said. "You guys having fun in Iwatodai? Making up for lost time? You're good at that, aren't you? I'm kinda of impressed. You're a fast mover."

Minako took a deep breath. She was not going to let him bait her this time. How, she wondered, did he even know about Shinjiro? Not that it mattered. It was none of his business what had happened between her and Shinjiro. This wasn't about that relationship, this was about-

"Anyway," he said, "you're just in time for the big show."

"I don't understand what that means," she told him.

"Don't you?" he asked her, almost jeeringly. "Well, then I'll explain it to you. You were kind enough to prove my point. You showed me everything I need to see. I wasn't wrong about this world. We're all trying so hard and looking like fools, for what? For nothing. There's nothing worth having, and there's no point in wanting it. I'm sick of it. It makes me sick just thinking about what you tried to turn me into. And here I thought I knew better by now, but…anyway, it's been fun, but the party's over. This time, you're not gonna have to clean the fingerprints off of the gun, either. Nobody's gonna care what happened here. Nobody's even gonna know."

"Tohru," Minako began.

"So long, Minako," he muttered.

Maybe it was the use of her name, or maybe it was something just a little bit shaky about his voice when he said it, but Minako suddenly had the feeling that something was very, very wrong. Without thinking, she lunged forward and grabbed for him, misjudging the distance and stumbling against him. Reaching up, she held on to his arm to support herself, and then traced her fingers along the arm up to the shoulder, where she could feel the cold metal of the gun settled far too close to where his head should have been.

"What…" began Minako. "What are you talking about?"

"Quit touching me," he snarled.

"No." Minako could feel her pulse getting faster as she put two and two together. "You're…you've got a gun to your head! That's-!"

"It's what?" he asked her, and this time there was no tremor in his voice at all. He sounded so bitter and intense that she didn't know what to say. "It's the next step. What were you expecting? I've finally figured it out. There's no point in sticking around to see what happens next to you dumbasses. I don't even care enough to waste the effort. Now we both get what we want. I don't have to get bored out of my mind watching you make the same mistakes, over and over, and you don't have to see my face anymore. Hey, I thought you'd like this solution. After all, I am the bad guy. There's no place for me in this crappy fairytale. This is actually kinda poetic. It's almost poetic justice. " He almost spat out the last word; there was so much venom in it.

"You're not the bad guy," murmured Minako. "You saved my life."

"Oh, so, you do remember that," remarked Tohru. "Well, I guess it doesn't matter. Like I told you, what really happened never does matter. It's the way people want to see it. And what people want to see…what you want to see is a monster. I told you I'd do anything you wanted me to, didn't I? So for you, I'll be that monster." Pausing for a minute, he added, almost casually, "You know, if I'm gonna do this the right way, I need a great closing line…damn, I should have thought about that before. What do you think, blind girl? What'd be some good last words? Or maybe you could just pretend I said them, make them up for me. Yeah, that'd work. After all, you're pretty good at making stuff up, and lying to people, aren't you?"

"Stop it," whispered Minako.

Tohru laughed. "What?" he asked. "Are you gonna cry, now? Go on, cry. Show me how good you are at pretending I mean something to you. I want to see you do it. Cry for me."

Minako didn't cry. Instead, she hauled back and struck him as hard as she could across the face. She heard his grunt of surprise and pain, and felt him stumble. Something, probably the gun, clattered to the ground by Minako's feet.

"Jeez," he muttered, and Minako could hear the wince in his voice."You really are full of surprises."

"How dare you," spat Minako, the rage starting to build uncontrollably inside her. "How dare you? I had to die because of you, because of people like you…people who can't see the value of life, who don't want to bother trying to make something out of it. Nyx never would have happened if it hadn't been for people like you. I could have had the life I wanted, I could have..." She thought about Shinjiro, Akihiko, Junpei, and everyone else who had been deeply damaged by the events of the sealing of Nyx. Yu and Yosuke, too, wouldn't have been where they were today if it weren't for the sort of people who had created Nyx in the first place.

The gun was still on the ground, and Minako bent down and fished around until she found it.

"Huh," said Tohru. "So you want to do it yourself? I guess that makes sense. That might even work out better. Okay, go ahead. You shoot me. Finish what you started."

"Get up," said Minako.

"Why?" asked Tohru. "You can shoot me just as well from up there."

Minako took a deep breath. "Get up," she told him again.

As she listened to the sounds of Tohru getting slowly to his feet, Minako's mind was frantically trying to get a hold of itself. She was still so angry that it was making her face burn. Part of her wanted to shoot him, just to release some of that anger for a moment. She wanted him to feel some of the pain that she had felt, that she was still feeling.

The rational part of her, though, the part that had already dried up her tears, was telling her that anger wasn't enough. It wasn't going to solve anything. If she was really going to prove her point to Tohru, there were other ways she'd have to do it. Maybe now was the time to test Yu's theory about the things that Tohru really did care about.

Slowly, trying to keep looking confident and defiant as she did it, Minako raised the gun, and held it to her own head. It's just like an evoker, she told herself, although her brain was now screaming at her to throw this thing away and stop acting like an idiot. She'd done this a hundred times with her evoker back in the day. This was nothing, as long as she remembered not to pull the trigger.

"Okay," she said aloud, and was pleased with how relaxed she managed to sound. "Maybe you're right. Maybe there isn't anything worth living for. If that's the case, then why should I bother?"

Suddenly, Tohru went very, very still. Minako could hear his breathing change as he watched her with the gun against her temple.

"Don't be stupid," he muttered. "Put that down."

"It's not stupid," she told him. "You said that you like shooting guns. Why, because of the rush you get? Maybe I'd like to shoot one, too. It's been a long time since I lost my evoker. This looks like it might be fun."

"Knock it off," he said, a little louder this time. "Quit playing with that thing, you might-!"

"Why?" asked Minako . Trying not to show that she was holding her breath, she pushed the gun a little harder into the side of her head. "You play with it all the time. Why can't I?"

"What are you trying to pull?" shouted Tohru frantically. "This isn't a game, put it down!"

He made a grab for the weapon, and Minako, honestly afraid of getting hurt, immediately let it fall out of her hand. For the second time, it ended up on the floor between them, and neither of them made a move to retrieve it.

"No," agreed Minako quietly. "It isn't."

Several moments of incredibly tense silence passed between them. Then, Tohru started to laugh. It was a low, almost incredulous laugh, under his breath.

"You got me," he told her. "Wow, you got me again."

Minako, who was begging her knees not to start shaking, sank gratefully down on to the floor.

"And you were scared," murmured Tohru, surprised. "What the…I don't get it. Why would you do something like that? What's the point?"

Minako shrugged. "This time, I wanted to show you something," she said.

"Show me what?" asked Tohru. "That you're a big girl who can mess around with weapons, too?"

"No." She shook her head. "I wanted to show you what it feels like to know you might lose someone you care about. I figured if you were going to do that to me, you should know how scary it is. Now you do."

"Heh, so you think I care what happens to you?" Tohru tried, but she could tell his heart wasn't in it anymore. "You're pretty impressed with yourself."

Forcing herself back on to her feet, Minako was glad to feel that her knees were done wobbling, and that she had a firm footing gain. Junpei, she knew, would be waiting for her, probably somewhere not very far away. He'd be angry about her running off like that, and he'd probably have spent all this time looking for her. She was in for it, and that was comforting. At least she could rely on Junpei to react in a normal, reasonable way.

"Why'd you come here, anyway?" muttered Tohru. "You said you wanted to tell me something. What?"

"It doesn't matter anymore," she said.

As she started to leave, she suddenly felt Tohru grab her by the wrist. "Tell me," he insisted.

Minako smiled a strangely triumphant little smile. "If you want to know," she told him, "You'll have to still be here when I get back."

She listened the sound of her own footsteps echoing in the eerie silence. One, two, three, four…

"When are you going to come back?" he asked.

That time, Minako didn't answer.

**Seventeen - December 23 and 24**

**Author's Note: **Okay, no, really, this is the most exciting thing EVER. Please, if you have a moment, check out **Yuruya-sama** on Deviantart. She was kind enough to do some wonderful drawings based on events from **Bondswoman** and **Messiah**, and she's so talented. Honestly, this is pretty much the coolest thing that has ever happened. Please go look. Please, and tell her how wonderful she is, because it's true.

…I will now take a deep, calming breath, and we can return to our regularly scheduled angstfest.

The next chapter will be Christmas!

If you want to read about the joint SEES and Investigation Team Christmas party, you'll want to check out the next chapter of **Piecekeeping!**

To read about a special Christmas visit that Minako makes to a certain Velvet Room assistant, you'll want the next chapter of **Messiah.**

Of course, I think that you should read both, but that, my friends, is entirely up to your discretion!

**Seventeen – December 23/24**

Maybe only moments after Minako had turned away from Tohru and had begun heading back towards the entrance, she heard someone's footsteps come to a stop in front of her.

"Hey," muttered Junpei.

"Junpei?" Minako bit her lip. "You…you were right out here the whole time?"

"Course I was," Junpei informed her. "What did you think I was gonna do, just watch you run off like that and do nothing? What kind of a wingman would that make me?"

The use of the word 'wingman" in such an unexpectedly serious context made Minako a bit uncomfortable. "So, then, you heard everything," she said. "Why didn't you-?"

"I knew you weren't gonna do it, obviously," he interrupted. "That's just not you. My Mina-tan loves living. She fights for life. Damn, it's barely even been a year since you came back. You wouldn't do something like that to me."

Minako noticed the sudden change in the direction of Junpei's conversation. First, he'd told her she wasn't going to do it because she wanted to live, but he'd ended up saying that she 'couldn't do something like that to him.' He'd been a lot more worried than he was willing to let on, she realized.

"Thank you for trusting me," she said.

Junpei didn't say anything for a moment. "Let's just go," he mumbled finally.

He took her by the arm, a little more roughly than he usually did when helping her get from point A to point B, and they walked back through the TV world, towards the Velvet Room door and the passage out of the TV.

"I don't get it," he muttered, as they walked. "Why do you always have to save everybody?"

"What?" asked Minako.

"I mean, it's like you've got this mission, or something," continued Junpei. "You just can't leave people alone. Even this Adachi guy. How the hell is he even worth your time? He's a killer. He's evil, man, he's not gonna just get better because you bat your eyelashes at him like you do at everybody else. But you just can't leave it alone, can you? You've gotta be the one that shows everybody the light."

Junpei had never said anything like this before. Minako was surprised, and genuinely hurt to hear the way he seemed to think she looked at the world.

"It's not about me," she began. "I just thought that he, like everybody else, needs someone to see him for who he really is."

"Who he really is?" echoed Junpei. "He's really a creep. All you ever talk about is happy endings. You want me to be happy, you want Shinjiro-san to be happy, you want this piece of shit to be happy…what about you, huh? What do you get out of all of this? When do you get yours?"

Minako was sure that she was a great deal more selfish than Junpei was giving her credit for. After all, when she'd first come back from the Seal, all she'd thought about was how she could find a way to her own happy ending. She'd almost sacrificed Yu's life just to get it, and that knowledge would haunt her for the rest of her life, even if things had worked out for what she still considered the best on all counts. In the end, though, it seemed that if everyone else was going to be happy, she couldn't be. They needed her to bear some of the burdens so that they could make it through the day. She'd died so that he friends could live, and the more she thought about that, the more she never wanted the chance to take that back. She'd lost a part of herself to bring Yu back from the Seal, and he was now a dear and trusted friend that she wouldn't dare risk losing. That was the fate that she'd accepted, and she was ready, finally, to live up to it, if that's what it took to keep the people she loved in the places that they so desperately wanted to be.

"Maybe I just realized what I should have known all along," she said quietly. "I can't have both. It's more important that I give you and all of our friends a chance to be happy. That's…that's what I really want."

She could tell that Junpei was scowling, even if she couldn't see his face. She could hear it in his voice when he next spoke. "What about what we want?" he asked. 'Did you ever think about that?"

"Of course," she said. "Didn't you hear what I just said? I've been trying to give you-!"

"We want you to move on, too," he told her. "We want you to have a chance. I want it. It's not fun watching you keep throwing yourself into other people's problems, especially people who don't fucking deserve the attention. Give it a rest already. You've paid your dues. Just…just live. For once, just…just let yourself live."

Minako wasn't sure she could. Junpei was looking at this all wrong.

"You and I are the same kind of person," she murmured eventually. "Neither of us can sit back and watch someone being in pain without wanting to do or say something about it."

"Tch," muttered Junpei. "Yeah, well, in his case, I could watch."

They stepped back out of the TV into the slightly noisier, busier world of Paulownia Mall.

"I'm sorry that I made you angry," said Minako, for lack of anything else to fill the laden silence. "I really did need your help. You did me a big favor today."

"I'm not mad," insisted Junpei. "Its' not like that. Let's just…let's just go back to the hotel."

**The next morning, at the hotel…**

The entirety of SEES, with the notable exception of Shinjiro, was back at the hotel, sitting around in the restaurant and enjoying a delicious complimentary buffet.

"Oh no," muttered Yukari sadly. "I ate way too much…I'm gonna have to go running or something after this. Where's Chie when you need her?"

"You're fine," insisted Minako. "An extra donut just this one time isn't going to hurt you."

"Dude," insisted Junpei, "Yuka-tan's right. She's getting older. We're not all seventeen like you. Her metabolism's gonna give out, and then she's gonna start getting bigger, and bigger…"

"Why would you say something like that, Stupei?" shrieked Yukari. "It's not that bad! I can still fit into my high school uniform!"

"…Wait, did you actually try to do that?" asked Junpei. "Women are so weird…"

Minako stifled a giggle into her orange juice.

Someone moved a chair out next to her. "Hey, Minako," murmured Akihiko, a little lower than usual. "Listen, um…okay, I know it's not really my business, but have you seen Shinji?"

"Yes." Minako nodded. "I went to the catering place to visit him yesterday. We…we talked about things. I needed to apologize. I think…I think he understands."

"Yeah. Okay." Akihiko sounded a little bit relieved. "I'm glad. He was pretty messed up about it."

Minako was sure that Akihiko hadn't been looking forward to this particular conversation. Still, even if they had once been rivals for her attention, Akihiko and Shinjiro were very important to one another. Of course, Akihiko would have had something to say about the way she'd treated Shinjiro. Maybe now that things were all over between them, Akihiko and Shinjiro could go back to the way they'd been before. Maybe their relationship would heal, now that Minako's had been broken off.

She wanted to feel good about that, but she didn't. Still, at least she'd done some good, even if she'd managed to do a lot of harm in the process.

Luckily for her, Aigis chose that wonderfully opportune moment to break into the conversation. "It is my understanding," said Aigis, "that we are all expected to travel to the town of Inaba this afternoon. Is this correct?"

"Mmph, yeah," mumbled Junpei around a bite of breakfast. "Right, we're all gonna go and have Christmas with the other guys. Rise told me she's setting up the place for us right now! That's nice, huh? It'll be all ready for a party by the time we get there."

"I see." Aigis sounded uncertain. "I confess that I have…concerns about my reception. It seems reasonable to assume that your friends are unlikely to welcome me back into their lives, as I am the one who threatened the life of their leader only a year ago."

A murmur of conversation around the table implied to Minako that other people were worried about the same thing. Clearing her throat, she raised her voice slightly above the dull roar.

"You're one of us, Aigis," she insisted. "Yosuke and Yu will understand. They would probably have done the same thing, in your situation."

"Few people," remarked Aigis, "would have been capable of performing the same feats."

Yukari sighed. "That's not exactly what Minako meant, Aigis…she's just saying that they'll forgive you, because they'll know you felt."

Minako smiled to herself. Aigis' newfound humanity made Minako unexpectedly think of Naoto. They weren't similar, were they? Well, not exactly, she decided, but they both did tend to take things in an almost irrationally literal way.

Koromaru started to whine. Surprised, Minako turned her head in his direction.

"Aw, Koro-chan," crooned Fuuka. "Don't worry, we're not leaving you behind. You're coming with us, of course."

"Yeah," agreed Junpei, "I bet Nanako's gonna love you! Still, uh…dunno where you'll stay. I mean, I don't really have any dog stuff in the house…"'

"Akihiko-san and I have Koro's toys in the car," remarked Ken. "We can bring them with us."

Conversation continued, but Minako was beginning to realize that she wasn't hungry anymore. All this talk of taking her friends back to Inaba was beginning to bother her, and at first, she wasn't entirely certain as to why. She really had meant it when she'd told Aigis that Yosuke and Yu would be able to get over what happened. All right, she admitted to herself, Yosuke would have a harder time with it than Yu would, but as long as Aigis and Yosuke weren't left alone together, things would go as smoothly as possible under the circumstances. After all, both she and Yu would be ready to do damage control. He was very good, in fact, at damage control.

No, what was bothering here wasn't Aigis, or even the idea of her two groups of friends seeing each other again. After all, they'd really had a very nice time at Christmas together, the year before. That had essentially been the first experience that they'd all had together which didn't involve combat or life and death situations.

"Um," inquired Fuuka, in an even smaller voice than she usually used. "Do you think we should invite Shinjiro-san? It doesn't seem fair to have Christmas without him, after all…"

Minako felt a lump in her throat. "You can ask him," she said. "But…I don't think he'll come." We should leave him alone, she thought. Let him get out of all of this. Let him walk away from all of the things that have been haunting him.

That, she finally understood, was what was frustrating her. She didn't want to drag any of them back into the mess of the Velvet Room shadows. After all, even if Junpei did try to dance around the question, that was the reason that he'd invited them all to come in the first place, wasn't it? Yosuke, or maybe Yu, or someone had insisted that they needed some extra help in solving the Velvet Room mystery, and Junpei had probably volunteered to go and get the former SEES members as an effective backup corp. It made sense, even she had to admit that. Still, after their moment together on the roof the other day, she wanted to leave them here, where they were safe, and happy.

"Hey, Mina-tan," asked Junpei. "Are you gonna finish that pastry?"

Minako was about to offer it to him, when the table shook, and she heard a slurping noise, followed by a triumphant bark.

"What? Seriously?" asked an outraged Junpei. "Dude, Koro-chan, I asked for it first!"

**Eighteen - Christmas Eve**

**Author's Note: **Just another reminder – if you want to see what happened/is happening at the Christmas party itself, check out **Piecekeeping**! I'm posting the updates for both stories at the exact same time, to try and improve the continuity of your reading experience!

And now, more Minako x Adachi. Angsty, yes, but at least we've finally reached a turning point, and this time there are no guns involved, so we are definitely making progress.

**Eighteen – Christmas Eve**

Junpei and Minako, with the entire SEES team in pursuit, spent most of that afternoon and evening driving back into Inaba. By the time they got there, it was already almost ten o'clock at night, according to Junpei. They all parked on the street outside of Junpei's house, and piled inside to a chorus of their excited and enthusiastic friends calling "Welcome back!" and "We missed you!"

Minako spent a short time at the party, talking to various friends and catching up on the things that had happened while she and Junpei were gone. Apparently there had been some pretty significant developments having to do with the investigation team and their mission in the Velvet Room. Yosuke took care to fill Minako in fully on the details.

"Hey, Junpei?" she asked, as she watched Nanako and Chie retreating to the kitchen with a plate of Nanako's homemade cookies. "What time is it?"

"Uh…" Junpei paused, apparently having to check his watch. "Oh, it's eleven thirty. Almost midnight, so…I guess that means it's almost Christmas!"

Looking around, Minako saw that her friends were all wearing smiles, and enjoying each other's company. Even Aigis, whom she'd been genuinely worried about, was now engaged in conversation with Yu, something that made Minako want to give the former team leader a big, grateful hug. Koromaru was, as usual, the center of attention, getting petted and cooed to by all of the girls at the same time. Only Teddie, Minako realized, didn't look very happy. Maybe, she thought, he just wasn't a dog person? Come tot hink of it, she didn't really know Teddie very well. He seemed like a difficult person to really get to know. She'd tried, of course, but every time she spent any time with him, he just ended up making a pass at her.

"Excuse me a moment," she told Yosuke, who was standing beside her near the Christmas tree. "I'm going to step out for a little fresh air. I won't' be gone long. Save some cookies for when I get back."

Then, sure that Christmas was going to be a success, she went as carefully and unobtrusively as she could out the front door.

As she walked down the street, she heard a set of familiar footsteps coming up behind her. "Junpei," she said. "You should be inside with the others. It was a long drive for you, I'm sure you could use a chance to relax."

"What's up?" asked Junpei. "What'd you leave for?" After a moment's silence, he added, "You're going to see him, aren't you?"

Minako winced slightly at the note of disappointment in Junpei's voice, but she held her ground. "It's Christmas Eve," she reminded him. "No one should have to be alone on a holiday night like this. Besides, you heard me tell him that I'd be back, didn't you?"

"I kinda hoped you were lying," muttered Junpei.

Minako turned away from him. "You don't have to like it," she said. "It won't change my mind. He needs me. I can help him, I know I can."

Junpei sighed. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I've heard that before." Unexpectedly, he walked forward a few paces and took her by the arm. "Come on," he said, giving her a long-suffering sigh. "I'll put you in the damn TV."

It wasn't a very long walk to Minako's house, where she kept a TV in the living room. Once they were inside, Junpei stopped and turned her gently around to face him.

"If you're not back out here in an hour," he told her seriously, "I'm going in after you, and I'm bringing the whole damn SEES team in with me. Maybe I'll even bring Yosuke, too. That'll put a stop to this crap."

"Thank you, Junpei," murmured Minako.

Junpei shook his head. "Can't decide if I'm a great wingman, or a terrible friend," he mumbled to himself. "Maybe both." Then, with more force than usual, probably due to his various uncomfortable feelings, he pushed Minako into the TV, and she landed with a fuzzy bump on the other side.

Almost instantly, she knew she wasn't alone. Even as she hit the ground, she stretched out her arm to catch herself, and felt another human body alongside her. Whoever it was twitched in surprise and pulled away from her searching fingers.

"Wha-?" exclaimed Tohru. "Jeez, you almost landed right on top of me."

"And you," retorted Minako, "probably would have liked that."

"Tch," said Tohru. "Maybe if you lost a little weight, first."

Minako, now long used to his habit of insulting everyone when he got nervous or uncomfortable, ignored that last remark. "You were waiting for me," she accused him.

"Again with the ego thing," he said. "Why would I be waiting for you?"

"Why else," insisted Minako, "would you be standing outside the entrance to my TV? Don't forget, you've been here before. I know that you know how to find it."

Maybe it was the reference to the last time he'd been inside her living room that did it, but that seemed to shut Tohru up for a minute. After a moment's hesitation, he said, more quietly, "You said you were coming back. I didn't know if you meant it. Figured I'd see if I could get through to your place. Didn't work. I really am stuck in this dump."

Minako sighed. "How romantic," she said sarcastically. "Breaking into a girl's house. How many times do I have to tell you to stop being so creepy? What if you had gotten in, and I'd brought someone else home with me? What then?"

Tohru snorted derisively. "What," he asked, "you mean, like your boyfriend? I told you before, I can take him. I've got experience on my side…he's still just some stupid kid."

Minako bit her lip. "I don't have a boyfriend," she informed Tohru, trying to keep a handle on her patience. It was getting harder and harder for her to remember why she'd come looking for Tohru tonight in the first place. "I was talking about someone like Yosuke, or maybe-!"

"Wow," sneered Tohru. "You're sleeping with him, too?"

It was no use, she thought, Turning around, she started back towards the TV. There was no talking to him. Even as she took a step forward, however, his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her back around towards him.

"Let me go," she said. "I can't deal with you being like this tonight."

"Why are you here?" he asked her. "What'd you come here for, anyway?"

Minako took a deep breath. "I wanted," she informed him, "to wish you a merry Christmas."

Surprised, he released her, and she leaned in to give him a very careful, very chaste little kiss on the cheek. "So…merry Christmas, then," she said, unsure of what else there really was to say.

Tohru was very silent and still for a minute.

Finally, he told her, "Quit toying with me. Don't come to me and do something like that, and then turn around and go back to him. If you think you're doing me any favors that way, you're wrong as hell. I don't want to be your charity project."

"What do you want me to do, then?" she asked him, exasperated.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Tohru.

Again, thought Minako, all they had for each other was questions, just more and more endless questions. She was getting tired of the constant uncertainty, and obviously so was he. "I don't even know who you really are," she told him. "I wish I could understand. I've seen so many different pieces of you, and I can't put them together in my head. It scares me. I want to…I want to fit the pieces together. Can't you help me with that? Try to help me understand you."

"You've already seen it," muttered Tohru. "I know you saw me, that night at the train station. You know what I really am. Don't ask me to watch you hate me again."

"I don't hate you," Minako assured him. "I don't…I just don't know what to think anymore. Please, Tohru."

"Jeez…" he sighed. "What the hell, I guess I can't make it any worse. Maybe. Come on." Taking her again by the wrist, he began leading her forward, a little too quickly, so that Minako stumbled and had to catch herself against him.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

Tohru laughed mirthlessly. "You'll see," he said. "Or I guess, maybe you'll hear. Funny thing about you, blind girl, is that somehow, you're a perfect match for this place. There's nothing to see there, but there's plenty to hear. I guess hell is equal opportunity for blind people, too."

"Hell?" asked Minako, feeling a little shiver go down her spine.

"My hell," muttered Tohru. "I made this place. Maybe, without knowing it, I made it for you. Pretty weird, huh?"

The farther they went, the more uncomfortable Minako was becoming. What was Tohru talking about? What was this "hell" and what did it have to do with her? Still, she didn't say anything, or try to pull away from him. She'd asked him to help her understand, and maybe, somehow, this was his way of doing it.

The farther along they went, the more Minako realized that she could hear something. It sounded at first like the murmur of voices, far enough away that she couldn't make out exactly what they were saying. Finally, Tohru stopped, and Minako was forced to stop along with him, to avoid falling into him when he pulled her up short.

"This is where I live, now," he said, and there was a faraway, wistful sort of derision in his voice. "I guess it's kinda always where I've lived."

Behind Minako, a young girl screamed. Minako whirled around, listening intently to the girl's voice hissing in panicky disgust, "No, no…leave me alone! Get away from me, you pervert!"

"Who are you?" called Minako desperately. "Where are you?"

"Oh, she's not really here," laughed Tohru. "She's all in my head. Listen."

Now, Minako could hear another woman's voice, a slightly older woman, maybe Tohru's age. This voice was also laced with disdain, so much so that Minako shivered.

"Take your hands off me," insisted the woman. "I'll scream…I warn you, I'll scream!"

"What's happening to these women?" begged Minako.

"I'm attacking them," said Tohru, with a hint of that same manic tone in the midst of his calm delivery. "Couldn't you guess? These are the women I killed."

"The women you…" Minako trailed off, distracted from her horror by another voice. This time, surprisingly, the voice was her own.

"Tohru?" said Minako's voice in her own ears. There was surprise and terror in that voice, and with a sinking feeling in her stomach, Minako recognized the moment she'd fled from him at the train station. She listened to the sound of her own footsteps echoing away into the night.

"Oh, look, there's one you'll recognize" continued Tohru conversationally. Minako couldn't find anything to say. She just stood there, with her mouth slightly open, closing her eyes as though somehow, irrationally, that might have an effect on blocking out the terrifying onslaught of voices.

"Goddamnit Adachi," said Dojima's voice. "Can't you get anything right the first time? Why do I always have to follow you around and clean up your mess?"

Then came other voices, ones that Minako didn't recognize. They were coming on faster and faster, beginning to overlap on each other in their eagerness to make themselves heard.

"…a shame that your career had to end this way," said an older, male voice. "You could have had a promising future on the force, but after a slip-up like this, I can hardly suggest you for promotion…maybe this wasn't a good track for you, after all."

"Please," said what sounded like a younger version of Tohru, "Sir, just let me explain…"

"I'm afraid that won't be necessary," said the male voice. "It is far past the time for explanations, Adachi…"

Minako tried to find Tohru again. He'd let go of her, and she had to flail around behind her for a moment until she connected with his arm.

"What was that?" she asked.

"My boss in the city," Tohru informed her. "Guess he wasn't too happy with me back then…"

Minako kept listening.

Now came the sound of a child crying, and then a harsh, much older woman's voice snapping, "Tohru, no more of this nonsense. Your father would be ashamed to see you crying like this. It's…it's embarrassing."

"I know," said a quiet, little boy's voice. Could that, Minako wondered, be Tohru, too? It did sort of sound like him, although she had a hard time picturing him as a little kid. "But, mom," the voice continued, and it had a shaky little snivel in it. "Aren't you sad? Aren't you gonna cry for dad, too?"

"Tears are meaningless," snarled the woman. "What's done is done. Nothing we say or do now can bring him back. There's no point in any of it. Go, you have homework."

"Now there," said the real Tohru, next to Minako's ear, "is someone I haven't heard from in a very long time…I guess maybe she made a special appearance just for you."

"Is that…your mother?" asked Minako, half-hoping he was going to say no.

"Yup," he agreed. "Sooo many years ago…yeah, I guess I don't know when exactly that was. I must have been fourteen. Wow, memory lane…"

"But how could she-?" Minako started to say, before a whole cacophony of voices broke in and interrupted the sentence.

"Tohru's a loser," sang a chorus of what sounded like children. "Tohru's a loser…"

"Ew," said a little girl. "Don't play with him, he's a crybaby…"

"Did you hear?" asked what Minako was pretty sure was a different girl. "I think his dad just died!"

"Wow, really?" asked the first girl. "Wait, wasn't he that scary-looking guy who used to drop him off at school? Yikes, I wouldn't want to have a dad like that…"

"Jeez, kids can be pretty mean sometimes," said Tohru. He sounded so…so un-phased by this. Minako couldn't figure out what to think. "I guess it's not so different, though. They just grow up into people who do the same damn things…jumping to conclusions, throwing rumors around…"

Minako just kept listening. It was like she couldn't stop now, no matter how badly she wanted to cover her ears.

"I'm just going out to do some shopping," said a young woman's voice. "I'll be back in a few hours, okay Tohru? Try to do some job hunting while I'm gone."

"Sure thing, Hinata," said the younger Tohru. "Wait, do you want some help? I can drive you to the store."

"No," said the woman, apparently named Hinata. "I'll be fine, and you have work to do. I'll see you soon."

There was the sound of a door closing, and then younger Tohru murmuring, "I love you too…"

"Who…?" began Minako, but she couldn't seem to get all of the words out. It was all too obvious who that person probably was. It was the girl that Tohru had told her about that time in Shiroku pub, the one who had broken his heart. So, her name was Hinata…just like the murdered high schooler. No wonder he'd flinched when Minako had mentioned that high schooler's name. It hadn't been related at all, it had just been an awful coincidence…

Now, for some reason, Hinata was crying. "What did you expect, Tohru?" she asked. "You're no real use!" Then came the sound of a glass breaking.

"I-I'm sorry," said the younger Tohru. "Hinata, I…please don't cry. Look, we can fix this, we can…"

Minako realized that she was shaking. The tears starting coming, although in some strange, nonsensical way she couldn't figure out if the tears she was hearing and feeling were hers, or that girl Hinata's.

"Please stop," she whispered. "I don't want to hear anymore…make it stop. I want to go home…"

Instinctively, she clung to Tohru, and after a moment, felt him holding her against his chest. He stroked her hair with one hand, and then muttered, "Shit, why did I…this was a bad idea. Let's get out of here."

As he led her back in the direction from which they'd come, Minako heard one last voice call out after her into the stillness that remained once Hinata was finished speaking. It was her own voice, again, saying words that Minako had already forgotten she'd even said.

"Thanks for coming," said Minako's voice, chasing them away. "I feel safer, not having to walk around alone…"

She wasn't sure how long it took to get back to the entrance to her living room TV, but eventually, Tohru stopped. Minako didn't let go of him. She could still hear those horrible voices dancing around her mind. The screams, and the tears, and the derision…

"So," said Tohru quietly, peeling Minako off of him and standing her up on her own two feet. "Now you know. That's what I really am. All of that, that's…that's the truth. Happy, now? I did what you wanted."

Minako nodded silently. "You…" she began.

Tohru laughed bitterly. "Go on, say it," he muttered. "I'm ready for it. Tell what a bastard I am, and how disappointed you are. How you thought I was somebody else, and I shouldn't expect any better from you now that you know the truth. The truth? Heh. I guess this is the closest thing to the truth that you're gonna get. It's what everybody else really thinks. Isn't that really what the truth is, in the end? The collective assumptions of all the people who judge you from the sidelines."

"Tohru?" whispered Minako.

"Yeah, what?" snarled Tohru.

"I…" Minako swallowed hard, trying to steady her voice. "I don't want you to go back to that place anymore. Nobody...nobody should have to live like that, haunted by all the bad things that everyone's done and said to them…no one can live like that. It…it'll drive you insane. It's…it's okay. You don't have to live like that anymore. I won't let you. So, don't be scared…"

Tohru just stood there, stiff with surprise, while Minako put her arms around him again and held him close to her. She knew that she was doing it mostly for her own comfort, as she tried to force out the images that had come into her head along with the voices.

His lips brushed against the top of Minako's head as she held him there. "I wasn't scared before," he informed her. "But…now, yeah. Now I'm scared as hell."

**Nineteen - Christmas Eve**

**Author's Note: **This chapter contains a lot of introspection and important plot clues. A little bit of the stuff here is repeat from **Piecekeeping**, and for that I apologize, but it is very important stuff that we are going to see play out in both stories in a very big way, so I figure if I had to repeat anything, this was probably it. Wouldn't want you to miss it and get confused later.

**Nineteen – Christmas Eve**

Minako stumbled back out of the TV, feeling cold and unsettled.

"Good, you're here," began Junpei. He must have been waiting for her out there that whole time, thought Minako. "Wait," said Junpei, suddenly sounding worried. "Holy crap, what happened? Hey, Minako? You look terrible. You're shaking." He put an arm around her shoulders, and Minako leaned gratefully into it.

"What did he do to you?" growled Junpei.

Hurriedly, Minako shook her head. "Nothing, he didn't do anything," she assured him. "There are just…scary things in there. Sometimes, the things that come out of people's heads are…"

"We knew that already," Junpei muttered. "I told you not to go in there alone."

"I wasn't alone," she whispered, but she didn't think that Junpei was really listening.

Slowly, they walked back through the streets together, towards the party. Aware that she couldn't let the others see her like this, Minako did her best to get a hold on herself. She tried as hard as she could to compose her thoughts, to look rationally at what had just happened in that horrible place inside the TV world. Tohru had said that he'd made that place. Did that mean it was the world that came out of his mind? Yosuke and Yu had told her about places like that. When they'd first gone in to rescue their friends, they'd discovered that everyone's mind, if left alone in the TV world for too long, would create a place to store all of those secret, unbidden thoughts and suppressed memories. So, she thought, that was what the inside of Tohru's mind was really like. The TV world just made it bigger, louder, more real, but…even if he walked away from it, it'd follow him, inside his head. Every moment of everyday, he kept tormenting himself with the voices and faces of the people who'd hurt him or rejected him. How could anyone get through life like that? It was terrible just to think about, let alone to experience for herself, as she just had. No wonder he was miserable and angry. What had trapped him in that horrible psychological rut, going around and around again, over the same old grudges and slights?

"It wasn't just the power that was too much for him," she whispered to herself and to no one. The very nature of the TV world, the way it took everything that was inside him, showed it off and let him keep reliving it was tearing him apart. What was it that Theodore had said? People who had never faced themselves sometimes suffered in the TV world. She couldn't remember exactly what it was that happened to t hose people, but she knew that Yu had been worried about it. He'd been terrified that those same things might happen to him, and that was what had started that whole debacle with the rabbit shadow six months previously. Yu's power had been granted to him by the goddess Izanami, as part of her twisted game. Tohru had been the same way, hadn't he? He'd never been given the chance to take what was inside himself and accept it. He'd just…

"Panicked," whispered Minako.

"Huh?" asked Junpei. "Did you say something?"

"No, sorry," murmured Minako. She remembered when she'd faced her own shadow, unexpectedly, but surrounded by her SEES friends, having just come back from the Seal. It had been frightening, terrifying, even. Still, everyone had been with her. She'd known that she was going to be all right, that she was going to be safe.

Tohru had never had anyone to face the darkness with. Instead, it had just engulfed him, eaten him alive, so to speak, and now he couldn't find himself inside it. He wasn't Yu. He wasn't a shining example of a human being, destined for leadership and a bright, supportive future. Tohru was just a guy, like every other guy, who was full of horrible things that he didn't want to admit, and had never managed to own. Now, those things were owning him, instead. She had heard that for certain in the voices inside the TV world. He was haunted by the parts of himself that he wanted so badly to let go.

Now, though, she told herself firmly, things were different. They were going to change. He wasn't alone inside his head anymore. She wasn't going to let him be alone.

"We're here," Junpei told her, stopping in front of what she assumed was his house. "Listen, if you want a few minutes to pull yourself together, I can stay out here with you until you're ready. It's Christmas. This is supposed to be fun. I don't want you to go back in and spend the whole party brooding and muttering to yourself like you do sometimes."

Minako gave him an absent –minded smile. "I'll be fine," she said distractedly. "I promise."

She did feel a little bit guilty about lying. There was no chance that she was going to spend the rest of the party trying to take her mind off of what had just happened. What she needed to do right now, she decided, wasn't to go and eat cookies with her friends. She needed to find and speak to Yu, as soon as possible, to ask him about what he remembered from the things that Theodore had told them the previous summer.

Luckily, he wasn't hard to find. She heard him almost immediately, chatting over by the sofa with Fuuka and Nanako.

"Yu?" she asked, almost as soon as she'd gotten within hearing range. "Can I talk to you for a second? I…I have some questions. Please? I really need your help."

Yu must have heard the unmasked urgency in her voice, because he immediately started wheeling himself forward towards her.

"Of course," he said. "Do you want to go back out side? It's a little crowded in here…"

Again, Minako found her way over to the door, and then held it open so that Yu could push himself through it. When they were both on the pavement outside the house, she took a deep breath.

"How is he?" asked Yu, unexpectedly.

Minako opened her mouth, then closed it. "Who?" she asked.

"Adachi-san," Yu clarified. "You went to see him just now, didn't you?"

Minako, not for the first time, was both surprised and slightly appalled by how good he was at this guessing game. "Yes, I…how did you know?" she asked.

Yu laughed quietly. "I didn't, but…you look upset, so I figured. He tends to have that effect on people."

Minako tried to smile back. "Oh," she told him. "Well, Tohru's, um…he's…"

"He's not so good, huh?" asked Yu, with a sigh. "I…kinda thought that would be the case."

"I'm not sure we did him any favors by locking him in the TV world," she agreed.

"I've been wondering about that," murmured Yu. "So, what did you want to ask me?"

Minako had to take a moment to figure out just exactly which of the thousand questions in her head she really did need to know the answer to first. "Last summer," she began, "You, Nanako, Yosuke and I went into the TV world to talk to Theodore, remember?"

"I remember," affirmed Yu.

"And," continued Minako, "Theodore told us something, about what can happen to people like you, people who were given the power of persona, but who didn't find it for themselves. People who never had the chance to face themselves. Do you remember what he said? Because I can't quite…"

She heard Yu's little intake of breath, and realized, all too late, that this was a very personal question for him. Maybe this wasn't the right thing to ask, or even the right time to ask it. Once upon a time, she knew that he'd had nightmares about the things that Theodore had told them that day. It was cruel of her to open up those wounds and to remind him of things that he was probably trying to forget, but at the same time, if anyone was going to be able to give her the answers she needed, it was Yu, who was so personally affected by this sort of a situation.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she meant it. "But I have to know, and Theodore…" She bit her lip. Asking Theodore, unfortunately, was no longer an option, even if Nanako was to be believed about his consciousness still floating around in the Velvet Room.

"It's okay," Yu told her, just a little bit less levelly than he normally did. "I'm guessing you have a good reason. Yes, I know what Theodore said. He said that people like me, people who have never faced themselves are prone to unstable interactions with the Velvet Room. Just like you and I, anyone who has a persona that they haven't faced or conquered can be subject to attack by shadows, if they aren't strong enough or in enough control of themselves to fend them off."

Minako nodded as he spoke. Yes, she thought, yes, that was right. In her case, it had nothing to do with facing herself. It was because of her separation from the persona that had been protecting her mind and soul for so long. In Yu's case…

"That's not what happened to you," she reminded him. "You already proved that you were strong enough o cope with yourself. Your mind was violated because of the Seal that you and I made. That's why, no other reason. You do know that, don't you?"

"Yeah," said Yu. "I…I think I believe that."

There was silence between them for a moment, as Minako was reluctant to break in on whatever reverie Yu might be in the midst of. Finally, he spoke again.

"There's something else I want to tell you about," he said. "I've been thinking a lot about us, and about what happened to us that day, when we re-formed the Seal. Haven't you ever wondered why you went blind, and why I lost the use of my legs?"

Minako snorted. She couldn't help herself. "Was that a serious question?" she asked him. "Of course I wonder. I wonder about it every day."

"Yeah," said Yu. "Well, I have an idea about that. I think it has to do with who we are, as people."

Minako frowned. "What does that mean?" she asked him.

"It's like this," insisted Yu. "And this is only a theory, so don't take it too much to heart, but…in my head, it makes sense. I've known you for a while now, and I know a lot of your friends. Everyone says the same thing about you. You're good with people. You can see who people really are. That's what's important to you, about yourself. Am I right?"

Minako just nodded. Yes, she thought. That did sound like what she aspired to.

"So," continued Yu, "when we let the shadows into your mind, they started filling you up with darkness. You couldn't help it – we knew that it was going to happen. We accepted it. But when we did, you started to lose track of who you are, or the person that you knew that were before you lost your persona. In your mind, you were someone who could see people, so when the darkness came, the first thing that went with it was your sight. It's…it's like a manifestation, just like everything else that happens in the Velvet Room."

Minako was beginning to understand what Yu was getting at. "So in your case," she said, picking up where he had left off, "You're a leader. You're someone who takes action, can figure out what the right thing to do is at any time. That's why you lost your legs. You can't take action anymore."

"Right," agreed Yu. "So…what do you think? Does that sound like it might be the reason? I know that there's nothing really wrong with our brains. The doctors can't find anything on any scans or tests. It's that place inside our minds, the place that houses the Velvet Room. That's what's damaged, nothing else."

Shrugging, Minako sighed. "It doesn't matter what I think," she informed him. "We'll never know for sure until we can talk to someone inside the Velvet Rom about it, and we'll never be able to do that, not unless we get help."

"But we have help," Yu reminded her. "We have the best help there is. Let's ask Yosuke and Nanako about it tomorrow. Maybe they can ask Igor the next time they go in on patrol."

**Twenty - Christmas Day**

**Author's Note: **And now, finally, a peaceful, fluffy moment. Sort of.

**Twenty – Christmas Day**

For once, Adachi was actually in the Velvet Room when Nanako came for him.

After the events of the night before, he didn't want to spend any more time in Magatsu Inaba. Before, it had been satisfying in a destructive, painful way to sit and listen to those voices. Now, though, Minako's voice was getting more and more prevalent in that world.

Now, she said things like "Nobody can live like that, I won't let you!" and "Don't be afraid." It was that last phrase that really got to him. She'd been totally unguarded when she'd said that, and there was a wealth of emotion in those words that even through all of their various ups and downs together, Adachi couldn't remember ever hearing from her before. Listening to it gave him something that nauseated him and kept him unbalanced. It gave him hope. If there was one thing that he hated more than anything else, it was hope. Hope was a treacherous creature, too treacherous even for Adachi, who counted himself the king of betrayals. He didn't enjoy being on the other end of that.

"Adachi-san?" called out Nanako, sounding worried. "Adachi-san, um, merry Christmas!"

The innocent greeting made his cheek get hot where Minako had kissed him the night before, when she was wishing him the same thing.

"Yeah, same to you," muttered Adachi. "Did you get some nice presents?"

"I don't know," Nanako admitted "Dad says we can't open presents until later, because…"

Suddenly, Adachi could hear the sound of footsteps coming from outside the Velvet Room door. Nanako started to look panicked.

"Come on!" she said, grabbing and tugging on his arm. "We have to hurry!"

"Wait, why?" asked Adachi, but Nanako wasn't listening. She grabbed his hand and ran straight from the exit to the shopping district.

"You should go outside," she told him, almost shoving him through the door. "It's okay! I don't mind! Um, don't come back till later, okay? So…uh…you can have the whole day! Even until midnight!" She beamed anxiously at him. "Cause, um, it's Christmas!"

"Thanks, I think…" murmured Adachi. It still annoyed him that he had to take orders from an eight year old, but at least she was making the effort to give him a generous holiday gift. The little part of him that had been raised to show gratitude kicked in enough to keep him from showing how much the curfew rankled.

His first thought, of course, was to go and find Minako. Then again, he remembered, she had made it pretty clear that she didn't want him "creeping" up on her in her own home. He scowled, assuming that she was probably spending the day with that guy Shinjiro, or apparently with Yosuke, whom she seemed to have over at her place enough to make her mention it the other night. He did not understand what she saw in those two. That boyfriend of hers never seemed to have anything intelligent to say. For a bright, spirited girl like her, he just seemed like a weird fit. He stood out when they were together. As for Yosuke, well…Tohru didn't even want to waste time thinking about all the nasty things he wanted to call that kid. Talk about somebody who just wouldn't ever grow up…

Then he laughed. It was perverse, he thought, trying to make himself out in his mind to be some kind of great catch. There was even less to see in him than there was in these other saps. If Minako's only options were a mute, a juvenile hero-type, and a murderer, then she should really aim a little bit higher. She could, he knew. She was worth it.

"Tohru?" asked Minako's voice. For a moment, Adachi was so used to the cacophony of Magatsu Inaba that he didn't even look up, assuming unconsciously that it was one of those voices Then Minako's fingers touched his arm, and he glanced in surprise into her sightless face. She was standing right next to him, smiling hesitantly. There were these stupid new Christmas-themed clips in her brown hair, which looked like they were supposed to be mistletoe. It was childish and charming.

"Hi," he said. "So…I guess this was your idea?" He hoped so. Even if all she wanted was to ask him more questions, he liked to think that she'd come because she wanted to.

"Well…yes and no," she admitted. "There's a lot of stuff going on in the Velvet Room today. Everyone's busy, and it's the holidays, so…" She shrugged. "I thought maybe you and I could do something together. Unless you've got other plans." There was just a hint of teasing in that last comment that boiled Adachi's blood and made him want her closer to him at the same time.

They started walking through the shopping district together, which was empty. He assumed that everyone was off of work and spending the day at home with their families, leaving the streets pretty clear. "So, what's it gonna be today?" he asked sarcastically. "Solving a murder? Chasing a bad guy? Or am I lucky today, and we're gonna get lunch while you try to figure out how my brain works again?" Even as he spoke, he was frustrated with himself. He didn't want to talk to her like that, didn't want to be so bitter and derisive. He wanted to make her smile, to watch her laugh at his jokes, but every time he thought about her, all he could seem to do was make it clearer and clearer to her how much he didn't want her around. It was a defense mechanism, he knew, one that he was really glad he had in place. At least if he made it clear that he was rejecting her, she wasn't gonna have the option of turning around and rejecting him.

"Um, actually," said Minako, apparently totally un-phased by his sarcasm, "I was thinking of something a little lower key, like…maybe a movie? I don't think there are that many theaters we can get to from here, but I've got that internet rental thing at my place. Oh, and I think Aiya still delivers on Christmas, because I know you get hungry when you're out of the Velvet Room."

Adachi stopped stewing for minute. Had he heard that right? "So…" he said carefully, "then, this is a date."

"Yeah," agreed Minako. There was no way she was blushing, was there? "Although, like I said, not much is open, so it'll probably be pretty boring for you…"

"I think I'll be fine," Adachi assured her quickly. "Hey, I love Chinese food."

They ended up in front of Minako's house again, and of course Adachi was suddenly full of uncomfortable feelings. The last time he'd been inside there, he'd…well, he'd be thinking about that night pretty much every lonely night he spent for the rest of his life. He wasn't particularly proud of it, though. This time, things were going to be different. He was going to act like a man, not like a horny sixteen year old boy. He was going to have to exercise some self control, which he could do, he reminded himself, because he was Tohru Adachi, ace detective, the man who'd successfully pulled off the Inaba murders for months without getting caught because he knew how to be calm, patient, and rational about things.

Unexpectedly, Minako slipped her hand into his as she opened the front door. Okay, he told himself, deflating slightly. This might be just a little harder than he'd thought.

They went into the living room, and there was the TV, and the couch…so many images went through Adachi's head when he looked at the couch. He could feel the heat in his face, as he frantically tried to dismiss those thoughts. "Jeez, pull yourself together, Tohru," he mumbled under his breath.

"Hmm?" asked Minako, as she fumbled around in the sofa cushions for the remote.

Adachi, who could see it, pulled it out and passed it to her. "Nope, nothing," he said. "Wait, how do you even watch movies?"

"I don't," admitted Minako, switching the TV on. "I listen to them. I know, it's weird, but it's really relaxing. I can make the images up in my head while I listen to the sound track, especially if it's with actors that I've actually seen before."

"What kind of movies do you like?" he asked her. "I guess we should pick something you've seen before, right?"

"Doesn't matter, she assured him. "I'm easy."

Adachi tried really hard not to take that comment in the wrong direction. Then again, he admitted to himself, she wasn't wrong about that…

"Although, honestly, I'm a really big fan of crime films," she continued, apparently blissfully unaware of what was going on in Adachi's head. "There tend to be a lot of explosions…and um, explosions are usually really noisy, which helps. Also, there's always some bad guy who explains his whole plan at the end really carefully…and that makes it easier not to have to see exactly what was going on to understand."

"Monologuing villains…not like that ever happens in the real world. Our job would be so much easier if it did." Adachi sighed.

For some reason, Minako smiled. "Oh," she said.

Adachi raised an eyebrow at her. "What?" he asked.

"You were talking about yourself like you're a detective," she told him. "You don't usually do that. Usually you say things about how you're a great criminal."

"I told you once before that I'm an amazing detective," Adachi reminded her.

Minako just shrugged. "Yeah, but this time it was different."

Maybe, thought Adachi, it was something about the atmosphere. Sitting on the sofa, watching Minako reaching for the Chinese food menu that was apparently the only thing she kept pinned to the fridge, it was so easy to forget that life wasn't really like this. Everything felt so…delectably normal, right now. She was acting like it wasn't weird, having a convicted murderer who was supposed to be dead sitting in front of her TV. It took him back to the days before everything had spiraled out of control, when it had been just him and Hinata trying to make something out of a day off on a very low budget.

Thoughts about Hinata suddenly darkened his perspective a bit, and he shook his head, scowling to himself. Yeah, he thought, that had started out pretty well, and look how that had ended. Normal didn't necessarily make it okay.

"Here," said Minako, handing him the menu. "Pick something you like. I already know what to order."

"Yeah?" asked Tohru. "What do you get?"

"Beef with Broccoli," she informed him. "Only…I don't eat the broccoli."

He laughed. "Wait, seriously? Your favorite thing to watch are action movies where stuff explodes, and you won't eat your vegetables? Jeez, I am feeling older and older by the second…"

Minako turned slightly pink. "Hey," she began.

"No, no," insisted Adachi quickly, "It's cute. Trust me, it's cute." He was being sincere about that, too. It was freaking adorable.

Eventually, they did settle on something, and Minako went ahead and made the phone call to Aiya. Then they switched on the movie and settled back at a safe distance from each other on the couch.

"Are you sure this okay?" asked Minako, as the credits rolled. "I know that you're never supposed to drag a cop to a police movie…they always get angry about things being unrealistic, or not being the way they would be in the real world."

"Yeah…" mumbled Adachi. "Can't say I really care about that. I mean…the 'real world' is kind of a fuzzy concept these days." Minako laughed. "Besides, why bother getting upset about it? There's nothing wrong with fantasy. Just let that become your reality for a while. That's what escapism's supposed to be, right?"

He was having a hard time concentrating on the film. The fact was, if this was really a date, they were just too far apart. For a moment, he contemplated asking her if it was all right for him to hold her, and then realized that doing that would make him sound even more like a awkward teenage loverboy than he had before. There was only one reasonable way to solve this problem.

He let out an exaggerated yawn. "Wow, all those nights of not sleeping in the Velvet Room," he exclaimed, stretching his arms up over his head as he yawned. "I guess they're really starting to get to me."Bringing one arm down around her shoulders, he pulled her closer to him on the couch.

There was a beat of silence, before Minako burst out laughing.

"Really?" she asked incredulously.

For some reason, she couldn't seem to stop laughing. That was a little embarrassing, he had to admit, but at least she didn't shake him off or push him away, so he decided that he could put up with it. Besides, it was nice just getting to touch her like this. Everything seemed sort of surreal, so drastically different from the way it had all been the night before, when they'd been forcing themselves through Magatsu Inaba together. He could still picture the tears in her eyes when she'd heard Hinata telling him off from the depths of his own mind.

"I want to go home," she'd said.

So, he thought, this was home, huh? He'd almost forgotten how good it felt to really have one of those. Maybe it took someone else to make it a home. Dojima, Yu, and Nanako –chan had always seemed happier when they'd all been together, too. What had Dojima-san said? When Yu had come to stay with them, they'd finally become a family? It had seemed pretty darn stupid at the time, especially since Adachi was pretty sure that all "family" meant was some people that you were unlucky enough to be related to by blood.

Still, holding Minako like this, and feeling the way her hair wisped out to tickle the bare place under his collar, he was starting to wonder if maybe there was something behind the idea that having someone else around made things feel just a little better.

She shifted against him, and he looked over to see her with her eyes closed, apparently focusing all of her attention on listening to the movie. Something about those closed eyes reminded him of the time that she'd really and truly opened them and seen him for the first and last time. She'd looked horrified and sickened, and it turned his stomach to remember it. All of those beautiful ideas of who he was had just run right out of her head, and she'd hated him like those other women had hated him.

This wasn't real, he reminded himself. This was just the pretty ideas she had in her head, the way she'd deluded herself into thinking things were going to work. Maybe she was trying to drag him along for the ride, but he knew better. He knew what he really was, and deep down, so did she. He shouldn't let himself enjoy this. He shouldn't let himself get used to it, because in the end it would evaporate and turn into regret like everything else.

He pulled his arm away from her abruptly, but she reached out and took it back, settling it back around her shoulders and moving in closer to him.

"It's okay," she assured him. "Don't be scared, remember?"

Adachi didn't know what to say to that.

**Twenty One - Christmas Day**

**Author's Note: **This chapter is…kind of a big deal. A lot happens. Things are resolved. Other things are…begun. Anyway, we are reaching the end of one of Minako's arcs. Fear not, she's got more where that came from…I feel like this character has more to her than maybe any other I've ever written.

I should let you know that there are two crazily action-packed, plot-driven **Piecekeeping** chapters on the burner, but that I can't get them fully typed up until Wednesday night. I'm disappointed, because I can't wait to share them with you, but it will be a busy couple of days, so in the meantime, please bear with me, and thank you for your patience. There is much, more excitement to come, and I truly hope that you'll enjoy it.

**Twenty One – Christmas Day**

When the food arrived at the door, Minako went to get it.

"Here you go, Miss Arisato!" said the delivery girl. "Ordering for two today? Ooh, do you have a Christmas date?"

Somehow, Minako got the sense that the delivery girl was trying to get around her to look back into the living room. "Thank you," she said firmly, and shut the door.

"Good," said Tohru, as she laid the food out on the table that she'd asked him to help her pull in front of the TV. "I'm starving."

"I sort of assumed," agreed Minako. As delicately and discreetly as she could, she opened the lid of her beef with broccoli dish, and began prodding each morsel with her fork in an attempt to figure out which was the beef, and which was the broccoli. Any identifiable broccoli, she forked carefully back on to the discarded lid.

"…this is kinda pathetic to watch," remarked Tohru. "Do you need me to do it for you?"

Minako felt herself turn red. "No," she mumbled, "I'm fine."

A few more minutes of fork stabbing went by, until Minako suddenly realized that she thought she could hear the sounds of chewing from the space next to her on the couch.

"Wait, are you eating already?" she asked.

"Mgmph, yeah," mumbled Tohru, apparently around a bite of food. "Course. Why?"

"You could at least wait until I've got mine sorted out first," Minako muttered.

Tohru sighed. "That…could take a really long time," he observed. "I'm hungry. Fine, here." Minako felt the fork being tugged out of her hand. "Tell you what, I'll take your broccoli, okay? Just…let's get this operation over with."

She forced herself to sit quietly and endure it while he finished taking the offensive vegetables off of her plate, and deposited them all on to his own. In an act of peevish rebellion, she started eating before he'd finished the job, and heard him laugh as she stuck the first bite into her mouth.

"Seriously, though, you eat like a kid," mumbled Tohru. "Do you do this when you're out, too?"

"Don't talk with your mouth full," suggested Minako. He didn't have much right, she decided, to talk about eating habits when she could hear the way he didn't bother to swallow his food before he tried to talk around it.

They had paused the movie while Minako was getting the door, and now she ran her fingers along the couch cushions, trying to find the remote so that she could turn it on again. Instead of the remote, she encountered Tohru's fingers pressed down on the sofa not too far from her own. He moved his hand aside when she touched it, revealing the remote not too far from his fingertips.

"Here," he said, pushing it over towards her. "So, why'd you have to get me out of the way today?"

Minako winced. She'd hoped it wasn't quite that obvious. "What do you mean?" she asked, as innocently as she could.

"Come on, I'm not stupid," remarked Tohru. "Nanako-chan came running in there, freaking out, and then all of a sudden you were waiting for me outside? So, what was it? What's happening in the Velvet Room that you don't want me to see?"

There wasn't much use in denying it. Minako shrugged. "Actually, it's the other way around. We don't…we're trying not to let someone else see you…"

Briefly, she told him, perhaps against her better judgment, about Dojima's unexpected introduction to the TV world. She heard Tohru's exclamation of surprise when she brought up the fact that Dojima was, hopefully, still sitting outside in the electronics department, guarded closely by Yu.

"So you're both on babysitting duty today, huh?" asked Tohru. "I guess I shouldn't be disappointed. Either way, I get free lunch."

For some reason, that hurt Minako. "No, it's not like that," she insisted. "I wanted to spend Christmas with you."

"Again," muttered Tohru, "I've gotta ask…why?"

As it always did, that question stumped Minako. She thought she'd known the answer when she'd woken up a few hours ago. A few hours ago, she'd had a head full of visions of how much Tohru needed her. Now, though, she had to confess that she was…really having a lot of fun. Things were very different now from the way they'd been inside the Velvet Room the night before. Out of that context, she wasn't sure what to tell him.

"You were so miserable in that place, alone," she hazarded, sticking to the theme she'd prepared. "I wanted to make you feel better…"

"Sure," muttered Tohru. Why, wondered Minako, did he sound like she'd let him down? "Oh, well. I probably knew that already. Anyone ever tell you that it wouldn't' kill you to be selfish, sometimes?"

That, thought Minako, was pretty much exactly what Junpei had said to her not too long ago. He'd sounded angry when he'd said it, and she hadn't totally understood it then. Now Tohru sounded kind of bitter about it, too. Why was everyone saying these things to her? Why couldn't they understand that all she was trying to do was help?

"Don't look like that," said Tohru. "Come on, a guy can hope, can't he?"

Minako didn't get it. "Hope for what?" she asked.

"I don't know," sighed Tohru sarcastically, "maybe hope that you asked me over because you just wanted to have me here?"

"That's what I-!" began Minako.

"No, you're not listening," interrupted Tohru, in that condescending way he sometimes took with her. "You said you brought me here for my benefit. That's great, that's…that's very like you. You're all about the goody-two-shoes, good Samaritan thing, but…I've got this crazy idea that maybe, one day, you'll want to see me just because it makes you feel good."

Minako had to think about that for a moment. "It does make me feel good," she said slowly. "I…I like making you happy." Okay, maybe that hadn't been the right way to phrase it. After all, she couldn't ever really remember a time when she could honestly say that Tohru had been genuinely happy. The best she'd managed was to make him sort of wryly amused, or turned on. Still, even that was better than miserable, bitter, and lonely.

"Let's say you win the game," he was saying. Something about his tone was just too casual for the serious context. "Let's say it turns out that you rehabilitate me, you make it all better, and I someday wake up a shiny new man with a new understanding of love, friendship and the…okay, I can't even say this stuff, it's making me sick just talking about it. Anyway. Let's say that happens. What do you do, then? You get what you wanted, you save a soul, and then you…what, just leave? Go on to your next fixer-upper?" He laughed, and it was that derisive, self-deprecating little laugh, again.

Minako didn't say anything. She wasn't sure what he even wanted her to say.

Apparently, her silence was all he needed to hear. "I figured," he sighed. "Well, it's not like I'm ungrateful. You're a sweet kid, but…if you ask me, you need a new hobby." Reaching over, he took the remote away from her and switched the movie back on. "Remind me," he told her over the sound of gunshots that came from the TV set, "to kill someone every couple of weeks…or maybe to try and off myself. You know, to keep you interested. Wouldn't want you to get bored, with nothing to do."

He went quiet, apparently now watching the movie, and Minako was frustrated and annoyed. He was baiting her again, she knew, with all that stuff about her being a "goody-two-shoes," and a "sweet kid." She didn't want him to think of her as a "sweet kid." She wasn't just a kid, and she wasn't just some saint, she was…

That took her aback for a moment. How, she asked herself, did she want Tohru to see her?

"Tohru," she said.

There was no response.

"Tohru," she insisted again, a little louder this time.

Again, he didn't say anything. Maybe the sound of the movie was too loud, but…somehow, she got the sense that he was ignoring her.

"Hey!" Infuriated, she reached out, found his face, and put both hands on either side of it, forcing him to turn and look at her. "Listen to me! That's not…I do care about you. I…I want you to be here with me, that's why I…" Confused, she fumbled the line.

There was an awkward moment's silence.

"Wow," murmured Tohru, a little more shakily than she'd expected. "And that's all I had to do to get you to say it. I just had to ignore you for a couple of seconds? You really are just a kid."

"Stop calling me that," she told him.

"Heh. You have to admit, though," he continued, "I got you that time. Now you know what it feels like." He took one of the hands that she still had pressed against his face, and pulled it up to meet his lips, brushing them lightly across her fingertips. His hands were a little unsteady too, she realized. He wasn't as collected as he was pretending to be at all. "Think I'll get something even better if I ignore you again?" he asked her.

"Don't you dare," muttered Minako.

He laughed. "Fair enough," he told her. Then his fingers were in her hair, at the back of her head, and he kissed her earnestly. She felt herself draw closer to him as he changed his grip and sought for her shoulders, supporting her against him as he kissed her again, and again.

Unusually for her, Minako closed her eyes.

"Oh, what the hell…I can't resist you for that long anyway," he said breathlessly, when he finally took a moment to release her. "Give me a chance. Listen, I'm serious, I don't know what else to do. It's too late for me, I'm all yours. I want to be your man, not just your 'saver of the week.' Jeez, I sound like such a sap right now, I can't…god fucking damnit." He kept kissing her, like he was afraid that if he stopped for too long, she'd evaporate in his hands. "Just, give me a chance to be whoever the hell it is you think I am."

It was frightening, hearing him talk this way all of a sudden. Minako had never heard so much desperation in his voice before, not even when she'd listened to the younger Tohru in the TV world trying to convince Hinata not to cry. She hated it, hearing what he was putting himself through, the pain behind those pleas. "Stop it!" she cried.

Instantly, he stopped, and then abruptly let her go, almost in the same moment. As she caught herself on the couch cushions, Minako realized that she'd shouted in her panic, much louder than she'd intended.

"Yeah," he mumbled. "Okay. I am…really a sucker for punishment, huh?"

As she sat there, still slightly stunned, she listened to the sound of him getting up off of the couch. It shifted slightly as his weight left it, and Minako realized that he was probably heading for the TV. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but couldn't figure out how to put all or any of it into coherent words.

"You taste like broccoli," she heard herself say.

Tohru's footsteps stopped. "W-what?" he asked, incredulous.

"The…the broccoli," stammered Minako, feeling her brain turn off and continuing to talk anyway, inventing as she went. "You, um…I think I have a breath mint here, somewhere."

Scrabbling in her pockets, Minako was amazed to discover that she did, in fact, seem to have a breath mint. Slowly, Tohru made his way back to the couch, and sat down on the very edge. He took the mint out of her hand.

"I…really don't like broccoli," she murmured helplessly.

There was a pause so tense that it was tangible. Minako found that she was having trouble not reaching out to him. She didn't want him to feel like that anymore, she didn't want him to leave. He needed to know that, and that she wanted him to stay close to her, but in the face of everything that was happening and all the stunningly unexpected feelings that were being thrown around, she didn't know how to tell him, or even exactly what it was she had to tell.

"Yes," she managed to say.

"What…the hell does that mean?" asked Tohru, a little hoarsely.

Minako took a deep breath. "Yes," she repeated, "I want to…to be with you."

He didn't say anything, but she heard the little noise he made, something between a gasp and a sob. Slowly, he gathered her into his arms, and held her there, and she listened to the sound of his unsteady breathing for several long moments as the atmosphere around them calmed to something that at least began to make sense again.

When she felt like she was back in a mental space that she recognized, Minako bit her lip. "Tohru," she said to him, "I need you to do something for me."

"Sure, anything," he muttered, like he meant it.

"You're not going to like it," she insisted.

She felt him shake his head against her. "Who cares? I…I said anything, didn't I? What do you want me to do?"

Carefully, aware that everything around them right now was remarkably fragile, Minako told Tohru what she knew about the Velvet Room. She told him what she remembered from her conversation with Theodore, as well as what Yu had confirmed for her the night before, about the way that shadows could invade the minds of un-tested persona users. Throughout the whole monologue, Tohru didn't say anything.

"I want you to go and see what's in there," she finished. "What's inside your mind, what's hurting you…I need to know that you can face it. I think…that you need to know, too."

"I can't," whispered Tohru. "That's crazy. We've seen that stuff before, it's…it's too much for one guy to face on his own."

Minako bit her lip. "Please," she begged him. "I need this. I wouldn't ask you if I didn't think it was worth doing. I don't just want it for you, I…I want it for me. I want to know."

"Tch," spat Tohru quietly. "A suicide mission, huh? I thought you weren't into that sort of thing."

Minako shook her head furiously. "No, it's nothing like that. I believe in you, I…if I didn't, I wouldn't even suggest it."

There was a pause, before Tohru said, "Okay. Yeah, I'll go."

Minako wasn't sure if she should be relieved or start to panic. She honestly hadn't expected him to agree to it. "You will?" she asked.

"Yeah," mumbled Tohru. "But…and I mean this, you'd better be waiting for me when I get out. Otherwise maybe I won't come out…"

Minako snuggled reassuringly into his embrace. "I will," she said. "I promise."

She felt him nodding, and was about to say something else when a very strange, nostalgic feeling suddenly washed over her, and she felt as though she was somehow frozen in time, unnoticed, for a moment, by the passing of the hours.

_I am thou_, said the inside of her mind.

Minako opened her mouth to speak, but words didn't come out.

_Thou art I_, said her mind.

Then, just as strangely and abruptly as it had begun, the feeling was over. Time started again, she could feel herself and Tohru breathing, and the bizarre voice that somehow came from part of her was gone as though it had never even been there to begin with.

Hesitantly, Minako felt around inside her mind, checking to make sure that everything was the way she expected it to be. Nothing felt different. She breathed out a sigh of…relief? Disappointment? Maybe it was a combination of the two.

"What's wrong?" asked Tohru. "You look weird."

"It's nothing," whispered Minako. Apparently, she decided, that was true.

**Twenty Two - December 26**

**Author's Note: **Good morning, and happy Thursday!

Here is some violence, blood, and angst.

If you're reading both stories, then you'll want to go and check out the most recent **Piecekeeping** update before you read this one. Things will make more sense that way!

Oh, and an important disclaimer. This story, as it has always been, is based on the events of the Persona 4 Golden game. It is NOT based on the events of the anime, which I have never seen. I have been instructed that at the end of the anime, there is now a new episode that shows what happens when Yu faces his shadow, etc. We are not taking any of that into account here, because according to the storyline of the game, it never happened.

There, that's all, really.

Oh, no, wait, there is more! I've been using the word "perverse" a lot when it comes to my depiction of Adachi….and I get the sense from some of those recent PMs that some of you are defining it the wrong way. I think the word you're thinking of is "perverted."

The word "perverse" means "wrong, stubborn, contrary, or in opposition." So, essentially, to be "perverse" is to be "contrary to what you'd assume." I'll use it in a sentence, like any good teacher would. "In a perverse way, Adachi wanted people to love him, even though he couldn't love himself."

I hope that helps! I love words…I hope you do, too. Of course you do, you're all wonderful readers and writers!

**Twenty Two – December 26**

It was probably morning. The only reason Adachi knew that was because he was back in the Velvet Room, meaning that it was past midnight, when his curfew had kicked in. His mind was still doing its best to get a handle on the events of that Christmas day. Minako had fallen asleep in his arms while the movie credits rolled. Not the same movie, he realized. It had been a different movie. They'd watched a few of them. At some point, Minako had made tea, but then she couldn't remember where she'd put the cups down, and couldn't see them, so he'd had to go searching through he kitchen to try and figure out what she'd done. That had been annoying, and adorable. It must have been after that she'd fallen asleep on the sofa. He hadn't wanted to move too much, in case he woke her up, and then…what? He must have fallen asleep, too, because the next thing he remembered was opening his eyes to see the unwelcoming walls of the Velvet Room, and Igor's vaguely disappointed face staring down a long, pointed nose at him.

It had been a long time since he'd gotten real sleep. He never needed it, in the Velvet Room, and the few times that he was out in the real world, he was too on edge to be able to relax into sleep, no matter how tired he ended up feeling as soon as all the humanity kicked in.

"I want to be with you," she'd said. Okay, it had come out as more of a stammer, and she hadn't even sounded as though she was sure she knew what she was saying, but…every time he remembered her saying it, a little thrill shivered across his shoulder blades and down the back of his neck. Then she'd made tea, and let him kiss her again, and laughed at his stupid jokes. She'd fallen asleep right on top of him without even thinking about it. She still felt safe enough to do that, even after everything that had happened to prove her wrong.

Adachi realized that he was holding his breath. There was this vaguely uncertain feeling that if he starting breathing, or moving, reality would come rushing back and everything that had happened the day before would shatter into tiny little unsalvageable pieces.

There was something else, too, he knew. He had made a promise, and for the first time in years, he realized that he was going to be a man of his word.

Slowly, Adachi stood up and faced Igor, which deprived Igor of his ability to look down at him. Igor was, after all, not as tall as Adachi, or at least, Adachi was pretty sure of that. He couldn't really tell, since Igor had never, as far as Adachi knew, actually gotten out of his chair. Maybe, he speculated perversely, Igor didn't even have working legs.

"Hey," said Adachi.

Igor just looked at him.

"Um," began Adachi again, "I need to…" He frowned, trying to remember exactly what Minako had told him. "I need to see the doors into people's heads. Into their minds, I mean. I've got one, don't I?"

"A mind?" asked Igor, with just a slight hint of surprise in his voice, as though he doubted the answer to that question.

"A door, obviously," sneered Adachi. "Every persona user has one, right?"

"Yes," agreed Igor. "But only those of our guests who lack a certain internal strength have any need to access those doors."

"Heh," muttered Adachi. He hadn't missed the insult, but it didn't matter. At least he was getting somewhere. "Great," he said. "So, show me where I can find-!"

Igor pointed at something just behind Adachi's head, and Adachi spun around to see that there was now a large door in the wall. It definitely, he decided, had not been there the day before. There was no way he wouldn't have noticed something like that. He was the kind of guy, after all, who was good at noticing things.

The door was made of wood, but it wasn't any kind of wood, thought Adachi, that someone might see growing on a living tree. This was dead, warped wood, twisted and scarred by…something. There were claw-marks in it, but they didn't look like the claw-marks of any real world animal. They were way too big and sort of curved for that. The door had a big stained brass keyhole on it, too.

"Where's the key?" asked Adachi.

"When you are ready to enter," intoned Igor, "you will find it."

Adachi was really getting tired of all this esoteric crap. He was about to say so, when he felt the weight of something drop into his shirt pocket. Reaching in with two fingers, he pulled out a brass key.

"Right," he muttered. "Well, I guess that answers that question…"

Striding over to the door, he twisted the key in the lock, and felt it click open.

"Okay," he said, sucking in a breath. "Here we go, Tohru…better not fuck this one up."

**Meanwhile, at the Inaba police station…**

Dojima came into work late, and sat down so hard at his desk that Minako felt the whole floor shake.

"Good morning, sir," she said. Her voice came out sounding much more strained than she'd intended. The events of the day before were still playing breathlessly over in the back of her mind, and they had been all night long. She hadn't gotten much sleep, and she was paying for it now.

"Morning," muttered Dojima. He sounded almost as bad as she felt.

"Did you have a good Christmas?" she asked.

In response to that, he just grunted. It was a noncommittal grunt.

Minako sighed.

"What's gotten into you?" asked Dojima. "You sound like crap."

"Same to you, sir," murmured Minako.

"What was that?" demanded Dojima.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep talking, but somehow Minako couldn't keep herself from telling him, "You sound about as bad as I feel. Too much booze last night?"

"Huh." He snorted. "I wish. Why, is that what happened to you? You know, I could turn you in for underage drinking…"

"And then," muttered Minako, "you'd have no one who knows the right way to make your coffee, and you'd really be screwed. Try getting anything done then, I dare you."

There was a short, tense pause. Minako bit her lip.

"I said that out loud, didn't I?" she asked.

"You sure did," agreed Dojima. "What the hell happened to you last night?"

"Nothing, sir," sighed Minako. "I'm sorry. Just…man trouble."

"Oh, that." Dojima sounded like he was frowning. "I…I don't want to know about that."

Something about that was very funny. Minako had to cover her mouth with one hand to stifle a giggle. "No, sir," she agreed. "You really don't…you have no idea how much you don't want to know."

"Get to work, Arisato.," growled Dojima.

"Yes sir," chuckled Minako. "Coffee, right. I'm on it."

She did get the coffee, and somehow, after that, managed to take several phone calls and accomplish several tasks without actually thinking about any of them while she did them. She was running on autopilot. Minako couldn't focus, as her mind was completely and totally distracted by something else.

Tohru, she knew, would be waiting for her in the Velvet Room. He'd be there now, getting ready to test himself on the world inside his mind. They hadn't said that it would have to be today. She'd never insisted that he do it as soon as he got back, and he'd never told her that he would, but somehow she just knew that he would be there, right now. Would he be frightened? Of course he would. She pictured him in her mind the way he might look first thing in the morning, with his hair even more bedraggled and tousled than usual, yawning and stretching the way he had when he'd thrown his arm around her the day before in front of the TV. She liked the image. It was…cute. She'd never really thought of him as "cute" before. She'd been attracted to him, yes, even fascinated by him, against her better judgment, but she'd never thought to apply the word "cute" until now. Something about the way he'd picked the broccoli out of her Chinese food, and then helped her find her tea things…it changed the picture she had of him in her head. There was no blood on his forehead, now, no evil glint in his eyes. It made her feel good to think of him. That in itself was a strange and unexpectedly welcome feeling.

When he'd poured out his heart, and begged her to give him a chance, he'd somehow managed to slip in the ridiculous phrase "saver of the week." Was that supposed to be a word play on "flavor of the week?" It was terrible. Minako giggled into the telephone receiver.

"Miss Arisato?" said the petulant old man on the other end.

"Yes," murmured Minako. "Yes, I'm sorry. I'm here."

**Not too long afterwards, in the Velvet Room…**

The walls of Adachi's nightmare world had eyes. There were, quite literally, giant staring eyes blinking out at him from each and every corner of the shifting, sinking walls. It was deeply chilling. As he stalked through the maze that the room had turned out to be, he tried keeping his head down to avoid having to meet any of their accusing gazes.

Unfortunately, not looking where he was going left him open to sudden attack. If he hadn't heard the shadow just in time, he would have stumbled right into it. Luckily for him, it screamed.

Adachi's head snapped up, and he found himself staring into the face of a shadow that seemed to have no shape, but was somehow the essence of femininity without needing to look like anything at all. The way it moved, the way it turned its head, the way it shifted position all reminded him of every woman he'd ever met, and yet of none of them at the same time.

Then, of course, it screamed again, and the scream was a combination of all the hatred, anger, fear, and betrayal that Adachi knew he'd ever heard in the voices of the people he'd promised himself not to love. The scream had no words, just raw, intangible feeling behind it, and it froze Adachi in place for a moment, as images gone out of control went flashing helter skelter through his mind.

"Magatsu Izanagi," he rasped, and then his persona was beside him, staring disdainfully at the screaming thing. A few swift strikes of Vorpal Blade dissolved the shadow and ended the screams, leaving Adachi in silence that only made way for the images in his head to suddenly couple themselves to well-remembered voices. Shaking his head violently, he forced the thoughts away and trekked on, with Magatsu Izanagi now leading the way through the nightmare world, with blade held out in front of it.

Before too long, another shadow appeared. This one was different. It took the form of a pair of scales, weighted down on one end. As Magatsu Izanagi swung at it, the scales swung back, and the persona chose to duck away to avoid the attack, leaving Adachi open to receive the blow. The scales struck him hard across the chest, and he fell back, just managing to catch himself with one hand against the ground. A trickle of blood ran from a wound that the blow had opened, right on his collarbone. "Heh," muttered Adachi. He soaked up the pain, could feel the injury recharging him, teasing out the perverse survival instinct, even as it reminded him of how right the pain felt. Slowly, he got back to his feet.

"My turn," he said quietly, and then fired. He was a very good shot, and it only took two bullets to explode the shadow. He felt a twinge of disappointment as he watched the shadow essence erupt. That had been too easy, anticlimactic.

He kept going.

Again, one of those feminine shadows appeared, and it screamed at him. This time, he didn't wait for it to attack. The drops of blood that were now splattered along his chest were starting to fuel his battle lust. He shuddered as it screamed a second, time, and then fired at it. When it didn't go down, Magatsu Izanagi's Vorpal Blade finished the job.

Unexpectedly, a second shadow came out at him from behind the first. He didn't even have time to see what kind of a shadow it was, but dispatched it instantly with a swing of Magatsu Izanagi's blade. He was hungry to hurt something. Himself, the shadow, anyone else, it didn't' matter. He needed more feelings, feelings like the ones he got when he was fighting. There was pain when he was hurt, anger, frustration, and that swell of triumph when he managed to get one up on the enemy. No matter how the battle went, there was always that real, tangible, memorable surge of…of something, of anything that made him believe he was genuinely alive.

The maze kept going, and going, but Adachi had lost interest in where it was leading. He was focusing on the shadows, mowing them down moment by moment as he passed through them towards whatever the end of this nightmare was going to be. He didn't care about the eyes on the walls anymore. He could look at them now, could see the hatred and the fear in them, and it felt good the way that they glared. They loathed him, despised him, just the way he loathed and despised himself. He needed to prove to them, to himself, that he was everything they saw in him. He was a monster. They had come out of his nightmares, and he had come out of theirs.

As he swung and shot his way through the throng of shadows, they began to retreat from him, to lurch back or to seek shelter against the walls. There was nowhere for them to hide. He listened to them screaming, in terror this time, as he found them and destroyed them, one by one. Every time they got a hit in, or managed to wound him, he'd laugh in their faces. He was worthless, he wasn't anything. There was nothing that they could do to him that he couldn't already do to himself. The blows didn't even hurt anymore, they just bled, and bled horribly, until he found that the hand he reached up to brush his sweaty hair away from his face was stained with his own blood.

Then, it happened. Somehow, out of the roiling, stained depths of what had become Adachi's mind, Minako's face appeared, the peaceful way it had looked when she'd curled up against him and fallen asleep. He remembered the way she'd kissed him right below the eyes, that night when he'd lost control of himself in the living room. The anger started to die down as he focused on her face. He took a deep, shaking breath, and then stared at his hands. They were horrible. He tried to rub out the blood on the sides of his pant legs. The wounds began to throb in time with the beating of his heart.

She'd said she wanted to be with him. He wouldn't be able to hear that again until he got out of here. Then what? Then she'd see what he'd done to himself, and the way he had gone after those shadows, and she'd be frightened. She'd be frightened of him, and he couldn't stand that idea. He needed to be the person she imagined him being. He needed to be in control. He needed to show her that he could be somebody worth caring about.

"No," he muttered, shaking his head and biting down hard on his lip. "No, I'm not…"

"Whoa," said a voice, from somewhere in front of him. Adachi looked up sharply. The voice sounded like his own.

Standing just a few feet in front of him was…himself. He was wearing the same clothes, the same red tie, and had the same stupid, taunting sneer on his face that Adachi recognized so well from his own. The eyes were yellow, but…he didn't care. It didn't matter, it didn't mean anything.

"You finally made it," said himself. "I was starting to wonder if you'd ever show up."

Adachi narrowed his own eyes, and clutched harder at his gun. "You," he muttered.

"No," laughed himself. "You, actually. Or, have you forgotten? I'm a part of you, the part of you that you wish you could ignore. It doesn't matter what that girl says, you know. I'm always here. She can't just close her eyes and make me go away. I'm not going anywhere. Neither are you."

Suddenly, all the eyes on the walls shut in the same instant, and a blaze of light illuminated Adachi's other self in a blindingly vicious glow.

"See?" he said, laughing. "It doesn't do any good! I'm still here! Face up to it, Tohru. You're me, no matter how many cute little tricks you pull for that kid. You can't escape me. You wouldn't want to if you could. I I define you. I make you stronger. Come on, let's show them all how little it all means. After everything they've done to us, it's time we gave something back, don't you think?

"Leave me alone," snarled Adachi. "I never wanted this, I never wanted you!"

"Oh, you didn't?" asked his other self. "Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm pretty sure this is everything you wanted. You wanted to prove to yourself and to everyone else that you really do suck. You're a piece of shit, Tohru. You know why you wanted so badly to prove that to yourself? So you wouldn't have to try anymore. You wanted to know so it wouldn't hurt as much when they spat at you, or shouted at you, or walked away from you. You wanted them to be right all along, because then you wouldn't have to care about it anymore. If you reject me first, then they can't hurt you when they reject me. Oh, wait, sorry. I mean you. I mean when they reject you. Then again, it really is the same thing. Semantics…who needs them?"

Adachi didn't say anything. He couldn't. The exquisite rage was building up inside his chest and in his throat. He knew that Magatsu Izanagi could feel it, was feeding off of it. He was going to kill this guy no matter what it did or didn't do. He would kill him for everything he'd done and everything he hadn't bothered to do. He would kill him for what he'd become. He would kill him for what he'd forced himself to lose.

Turning his head, he looked for his persona, to command it to attack.

Magatsu Izanagi wasn't there. "What…?" asked Adachi.

His other self laughed. "Aww, did your persona leave you?" he taunted him. "Just like everybody else, huh? You can't even hold on to yourself for long enough to get anything done. You don't get it, do you? You don't have anything without me. Not your persona, not your power, not your strength…I gave you all of that. You'll figure it out someday. That dumbass girl's gonna figure it out too. Why not show her the kind of man you really are? You don't have to wait for her to want you. We take what we want. I'll have her whenever I feel like it, and when I'm bored with her, I can just…well, but you know what to do with people, don't you? The same thing they always do to you. You just use them, and throw them away. It's easy, and meaningless. I'll do the same thing to that girl…and so will you."

An inhuman sound ripped its way out of Adachi's throat. He could feel the gun still in his hands, as the sweat poured down the back of his neck, and the anger started to cloud his vision so much that his other self was a blurry picture in front of him. He didn't need a persona, he'd take this guy out without Magatsu Izanagi's help. He needed this, craved it. He wanted to watch himself burn.

There was nothing in the world, thought Adachi, that he hated more than himself.

**Twenty Three - December 26**

**Author's Note: **...you may want a box of tissues for the next couple of updates. Not a sermon, just a thought.

**Three – December 26**

As soon as work was over for the day, Minako headed straight for the shopping district. She wanted to be waiting there, just like she'd promised, when Tohru came out of the Velvet Room. It would be a little awkward looking, she realized, if she just stood there waiting in front of the Velvet Room door, which no one would be able to see. It would look suspiciously like she was just loitering around, looking for trouble, and considering how many "suspicious person" calls she answered on a day to day basis, it was likely that some bored old lady would call into the police station and report her. Dojima wasn't in a very good mood today, and she'd made enough conversational flubs already. She didn't need to have him haul her back into the station just to shout at her for making more trouble than she needed to.

Instead of waiting outside the Velvet Room, therefore, Minako stood inside Old Lady Shiroku's store, and pretended to browse things. The owner didn't mind her being there. Old Lady Shiroku was always very patient with her customers, especially with Minako, whom she seemed to have decided was blind, and therefore also stupid, and thus completely incapable of causing any real problems. Lots of people, thought Minako bitterly, made judgments like that about her. Then again, in cases like this, it ended up working to her benefit. Besides, she reflected, it really made more sense, coming from Shiroku. After all, as people got older, they lost their sight and their sense, so the idea of those two things going together seemed less irrational and mean coming from someone of Shiroku's age.

As she pawed through the various healing and medicinal supplements, Minako listened to the ticking of the clock. She wished that she and Tohru had set some sort of time, or plan. Everything had been eerily blissful yesterday, and they'd never really felt the need to think of things in practical terms. Now that she was back in the daily grind, so many things seemed like good ideas that hadn't occurred to her then.

Suddenly, she heard familiar voices coming from the street, and instinctively, Minako ducked farther into the store, where she couldn't be easily seen. It sounded like Yosuke and Teddie, on their way either to or from Junes.

"…gonna get me in trouble!" Yosuke was saying. Minako could picture the exasperated look on his face as he harangued Teddie about what was, no doubt, another mishap, inappropriate flirtation, or theft. "Honestly, I don't know why we don't just fire you. You're lazy, you're useless, you break all the rules, and you get on everybody's damn nerves!"

Wow, thought Minako. Yosuke was really working himself up this time. She'd heard this argument many times before, of course, but it sounded like today it was a pretty bad one.

"But Yosuke," whined Teddie. "You can't fire me…I'm adorable! All the ladies come to see me, and to pet my soft fur…I'm too cute to fire! I'm good for business!"

Minako snorted to hide a laugh. She could picture him twinkling up into Yosuke's outraged face.

"You're…you're not….ugh." Yosuke gave up with a sigh. "Yeah, well…I don't get why, but you're right, business has gotten better since you showed up. If only you could quit eating all the merchandise…"

In a few more moments, the sounds of their voices and steps disappeared, and Minako knew she was alone.

"Boy trouble, dearie?" asked Old Lady Shiroku. Minako almost jumped. She'd forgotten that the owner was even here.

"Um…no," she began, "No, it's not…um…nothing like that."

Old Lady Shiroku hummed softly to herself, as she moved off towards the shelves in the back of the store. "Oh, don't you mind me," she reassured Minako. "I won't tell him you're here. Why, when I was a girl, I had admirers too…too many to count, in fact! I know it's hard to believe now…"

As Old Lady Shiroku continued to mumble nostalgically to herself, Minako felt a twinge of regret that the situation wasn't that simple. It wasn't that Yosuke was an admirer, or that she was hiding from him, it was just that…

It was just that she didn't want him to know what she was up to. For some strange reason, she felt like a criminal herself, just because she was going to see Tohru. Why should she feel guilty about that? After all, most of the rest of the team went to see him every day, for business in the Velvet Room. Nanako visited as often as she could, partially because she wanted to look at the compendium, but also because she was worried that he'd just get lonely. Why was it okay for Nanako to do that, and not for Minako?

Even as she asked herself the question, though, Minako knew the answer. It wasn't the fact that she went to see him that she was ashamed of. It was the fact that she cared about him, and cared about him in a very different way from the way that Nanako cared. Nanako felt mostly sorry for Tohru, but Minako…Minako felt something else, something that her brain was still shying actively away from identifying.

It would hurt Yosuke, Minako knew, if he found out that she cared about Tohru. It would hurt him so badly that he might never speak to her again, and it was that selfish terror that made Minako want to hide behind boxes when she heard Yosuke, or any of the investigation team coming by.

Maybe, she thought to herself, this wasn't really a good idea. She wasn't either ready or willing to give up the new friends she'd made or the old ones she'd rediscovered, just because she had a crush on an unpopular man. If she had to sacrifice all those bonds she'd made just to be with Tohru, then it definitely couldn't be worth it.

Still, every time his name came into her inner monologue, she got a little shivery feeling of pleasant anticipation. She was definitely drawn to him, more now than she'd been even six months before. The infatuation wasn't getting better, it was getting worse. It didn't help that he cared for her too, cared for her so much that he'd broken down more than once just for the chance to be with her. She liked that vulnerable side of him, liked the unexpectedly charming humanity that he saved just for her. She couldn't just let it go and give it up because she was afraid of being looked down on by her friends.

The thoughts going through Minako's head had become so contradictory and oxymoronic that they were beginning to just make her annoyed and impatient. Hurriedly, she gathered up several healing items at random from the store, paid for them, and then charged back over to the Velvet Room door. Tohru still wasn't there. Maybe he couldn't get out on his own. Maybe he was stuck in there waiting for Nanako to let him out so that he could come and see Minako to keep their promise.

Minako leaned one shoulder restlessly against the Velvet Room door, and let out a long, agitated sigh. Then, her arm gave way, and so, amazingly, did the door itself. Minako fell through with a little shriek of protest.

She landed on her side on the floor, and the bag of Shiroku purchases tumbled out of her hands. She heard a bottle of peach seeds crash against the ground, and then the sound of several small round objects rolling crazily around the room.

"Welcome to the Velvet Room," murmured Igor, in what genuinely sounded like surprise.

"What?" managed Minako. Pushing herself to her feet, she dazedly dusted herself off. "Igor?" she asked. "Am I…are we really in the Velvet Room?"

"Ah," replied Igor. "Am I to understand that this was not an intentional visit? Then it seems that you, too, have found that your powers are beginning to re-awaken. Fascinating. Truly, you are one of the most interesting guests that I have ever had the privilege to host in this Velvet Room."

Minako took a moment to wrap her head around that. "Me…too?" she asked. "Then, someone else has been here? Someone else who doesn't have powers?" He must, she realized, be talking about Yu. The idea that Yu had found his way back into the Velvet Room excited her. Maybe, just maybe, he was getting better! Yosuke and the others would be so excited! She couldn't wait to see them and ask them about it.

Only after that thought had finished forming did she realize that this all meant for her. "Igor," she murmured. "Did you say that my powers are beginning to re-awaken?"

"Hmm…" intoned Igor. "So it does appear…"

**Meanwhile, in Adachi's nightmare room…**

Adachi was not facing favorable odds, and his wounds were increasing as he threw everything he had into the battle against the other side of himself.

Magatsu Izanagi had abandoned him, but his presence wasn't completely unfelt. While Adachi had only his weapon to defend with, his shadow counterpart seemed to have all the powers that Magatsu Izanagi possessed. For the fourth or fifth time, Adachi dodged out of the way, just in time to avoid a bolt of lightning that his shadow self summoned with just a snap of his two fingers.

"Boring…" muttered Adachi's shadow self. "Jeez, give me a break…either die already, or hit me with your best shot. Don't tell me this is all you've got…I know you better than that."

"Again, Adachi aimed and fired at his shadow self's head, and again, the bullet stopped in mid-air and fell just short of the shadow, bouncing harmlessly and tauntingly off the ground in front of them both.

"Tch," muttered shadow Adachi. "I've told you…you can't hit me with that! You don't have a persona. You don't have your powers. That little toy of yours isn't gonna hurt me!"

"Then what the hell am I supposed to do?" snarled Adachi.

"Yeah…" Shadow Adachi seemed to think about that for a moment. "Actually, when you put it that way, I guess your only option really is to die."

Suddenly, shadow Adachi raised one hand, and Magatsu Izanagi's vorpal blade appeared in it. "We're all part of you," he said. "Or maybe you're part of us. It's all the same thing, really, except that now, we're going to win, and there isn't going to be a 'you' anymore. 'You' won't exist. It'll just be us, all the parts of you that you don't want to face. Just imagine what we're gonna do to that pretty girl of yours…I get little chills just thinking about it."

Adachi gritted his teeth against the terrible visions of what he could, and would do to Minako if he let himself have the chance. Again, he fired the gun, and again, nothing happened. Dropping the gun, he lunged forward at his shadow self, reaching for the throat, hoping that his hands might be able to do what his weapon couldn't.

Almost lazily, shadow Adachi stabbed forward with the vorpal blade, and ran it straight through Adachi's oncoming torso.

At first, there wasn't any pain. Adachi was full of so much rage and panic that maybe he wasn't ready to feel it. Slowly, though, as he collapsed on to the ground, the searing feeling in his guts began to wrench at him, and he forced himself to breath in and out, while he stared down at the puddle of blood that was now pooling on his clothes and around where he'd fallen.

"Heh," remarked shadow Adachi, "hey, that was kind of fun. It's a shame, though…maybe if you weren't such a dumbass, we could have kept going for a little longer. Seriously? Who runs into a sword? Well, so long, loser."

Adachi watched through bleary, clouding eyes as his shadow self apparently disappeared into the wall. He opened his mouth to call out to it, but no words came out. Instead, he just ended up coughing up more blood. Jeez, he thought, with remarkable clarity. How was there so much goddamn blood? Where was it all coming from? He had to be dead already. There was no way he could bleed this much and not be dead. How was this happening?

Then, he heard Minako's voice calling to him as feminine footsteps came rushing towards him across the landscape of his nightmares. Turning his head slightly, he thought he saw her, dressed for work and running-full tilt in his direction.

"Tohru?" she was shouting. "Tohru, where are you? I thought I heard you, but…it didn't sound right. Tohru? Answer me!"

Right, thought Adachi, letting his head drop back against the ground. So, he decided, he really was dead. How else was he hearing Minako's voice in this place? After all, she couldn't even get into the Velvet Room. Was it possible that there really was a heaven, and that he was going there? That would be…no, way too good to be true, and kind of weird. No, he was probably just hallucinating.

"Great," he muttered aloud, although it came out as more of a croak than anything else. "So it was a suicide mission after all…in a lot of ways." For some reason, the terrible irony of that made him laugh. The laugh hurt, and turned into a cough, and then a choke. It was hard to keep himself breathing for a moment, and as soon as he'd managed to force his lungs to work again, he felt Minako's cool hands against his face.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

"Sorry," he managed hoarsely. "Hey, though…you have to give me…points for trying. Pretty…damn heroic, if you ask me. Ugh." Talking was too painful. Things were already starting to get fuzzier and darker all around him.

"There's so much blood," Minako was saying distractedly. Suddenly, she ripped open what was left of his shirt, and pressed her hands hard against his bare chest where the wound was bleeding out.

"Whoa," muttered Adachi, forcing a sputtering laugh. "You want me pretty bad, huh? I knew it. I knew it, the hero thing, it…really turns you on. Wish I'd tried this a little…ugh, sooner."

"That's right," said Minako. "Make offensive jokes. Just keep talking, okay? I'm going to call a healer. I'll call Yukari. Oh!" She started suddenly, as though remembering something. "The bag…I left it in the Velvet Room. I'll be right back. Don't' move, Tohru. Don't move."

Her hands lifted off of him for a moment, and without realizing he was doing it, Tohru reached out and caught hold of her wrist as she started to step away from him.

"Hey, blind girl," he said. "Stick around, okay? I'm…fucking dying."

"No, you aren't," insisted Minako harshly. "I told you, I'm getting you some medicine, or a healer…hopefully both! I'm going to fix this, I…"

"Yeah, sure," mumbled Adachi. "You know what? Good luck with that."

**Twenty Four - December 26**

**Author's Note: **So, here's where plot gets complicated. Stay with me, this is going to be an exciting ride to the finish line. If you are reading both stories, find something to bite down on, because a lot of things are going to happen very fast. Although, at least when it comes to **Piecekeeping**, there's a brief introspective lull before things really hit the fan.

WARNING: As you know, if you've read my stories before, I do not promise or vouch for the survival of ANY of these characters. I like to kill people off, it's this problem that I have. Just keep that in the back of your mind as we move forward with this chapter…I don't want you to tell me later that I never warned you.

Thanks very much to **SuperNova23** for his brilliant fact-checking, and to **Meia42** for his iron-clad encouragement. I have the best readers. It's true. You all are, in fact, the best readers.

Oh! Speaking of awesome people, I have had the privilege yet again to write a story with **SuperNova23**! It's called **Snowfall**, and he does great work, so please do go check it out, if you have the time! You can find it on my profile page.

**Twenty Four – December 26**

Minako was doing the best she could not to panic. It didn't help that she couldn't see how bad Tohru's injuries were. It was probably even worse, she knew, than she was trying not to imagine. There was definitely a lot of blood. Her hands were now covered in it, from trying to staunch the wound. She was standing in it, too…it was everywhere. All of the healing items she'd bought were still rolling around on the floor in the Velvet Room, and judging by all the blood, she didn't have time to run back and search for them. Desperately, she ripped off her jacket and tried tying it around the wound. It wasn't long enough; there wasn't enough fabric, and every extra second that it took her searching fingers to find the place where the gash began was another second that Tohru was losing.

"Oh, god," she muttered again. "How did I let this happen? What was I thinking?"

"That's…a rhetorical question, right?" mumbled Tohru weakly. "Because I've never been great at… figuring out what women are thinking. Actually…who is?"

"Shut up," said Minako. "Talking is probably only making it worse…" She bit her lip, trying to stifle the rising urge to throw up from sheer terror at the idea that there was nothing, absolutely nothing that she could do to stop this. That couldn't be right, that wasn't possible. There had to be something. "I should never have asked you to do this," she whispered. "You were right, it was too much, and it wasn't fair. I'm…I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Tohru, I'm sorry…I didn't think…"

"Hey." His fingers brushed against her face. She could feel the blood staining her cheek as he touched her, but she didn't care. "Look, there are…worse things than having a girl…think you're better than you are. It was nice. Sucks that…you were wrong about me, but…it was nice. Thanks. Guess in the end, I…kinda let you down. Oh well…I figured." He started coughing again, and little flecks of blood spattered against Minako's cheek. "Whoa…okay, that was gross…" he managed, with a weak little laugh. "Sorry."

"You didn't let me down," insisted Minako, shaking her head fiercely as she leaned into his feebly outstretched hand. "You didn't. There was nothing you could have done. You were completely defenseless, in here alone. No one should ever have to face themselves alone." Her mind was raging at itself, screaming at her that she'd killed him, that she'd done this to him because she was so desperate for him to prove to her that he could be her knight in shining armor after all. She'd been so sure that it would make them both so happy if he could only prove that he wasn't the monster from those media nightmares. Instead, she'd essentially charmed him into rushing headlong into his death.

In the end, she realized, she'd been no different from all those horrible, warped and twisted images of women that Tohru had running around in his head. She'd done exactly what those women he was scared of would have done to him. Despite everything, despite all of her best intentions, she'd betrayed him at the last.

Tears started to fall from Minako's eyes, and for once she didn't try to stifle them or brush them away. In her weakened state, without her powers, there was nothing else she could do. At least she could cry for him. "I'm so sorry," she sniffled again, hoping that maybe the tears and the words together would help Tohru understand how much she meant it, and how much he'd almost been able to mean to her. "I wanted…"

"Hey…don't cry," Tohru muttered. "Knock it off…"

"I know," sobbed Minako. "I know, I'm ugly when I cry."

"Tch," Minako could tell that Tohru's breathing was getting more and more strained. Just spitting out that last little sound had been hard for him. "Who the hell told you that?"

Despite herself, Minako choked out a laugh. "You did," she reminded him.

"Yeah, well…" he sighed. "I'm a dumbass…don't you know that by now? You're not fucking ugly…you're beautiful. You're…insanely beautiful…"

Then, his voice shuddered a little, and Minako had to grab at his hand as it fell away from her face. She couldn't hear his rasping breaths anymore, and when she reached out and frantically pressed her hand back to his chest, there was no more rise and fall.

"Tohru?" she called, but it came out as more of an inaudible gasp. "We promised I'd be waiting for you when you came back out…so you have to come out! You have to…"

Minako started to cry in earnest. It didn't matter anymore. The pain in her chest was too terrible, as though she was the one who'd been run through. The sobs began to worsen, until the tears were streaming down her face in torrents. The panic and the sorrow were rapidly beginning to turn into rage, rage at her uselessness, and at her complete inability to save a man whom she'd talked into harm's way by promising him that she could care for him if only he could be what she wanted him to.

"But I wasn't wrong," she murmured, uncertain if it was him she had to reassure, or herself. "I wasn't wrong about you. You could have been a hero, Tohru…you were my hero. I still believe in you."

Even as the tears continued to run down her cheeks, re-wetting each tearstain as it had the audacity to dry, Minako heard the voice.

_I am thou. Thou art I._

"Leave me alone," she sobbed.

_From your tortured soul, I come to bring you peace._

"Stop it," mumbled Minako. "Not right now. Not right now, it's not fair!" It was torture, hearing these voices and imagining how things might have been if only the voices had been real, if only they'd really meant something, if only they'd been able to give her that power that she needed to protect him from what he'd done to himself.

_Thou hast re-discovered the true self, the essence of the person you have and will become._

Even as Minako did her best to force out the torturously memorable voice, she heard something that she recognized. The words were those that she'd said herself, almost a year before. They were the same words that she'd once heard in the last moments before she'd finally re-sealed Nyx, and had watched the beautiful colors of her world shut themselves away from her forever. Well, no, she corrected herself. Not exactly the same words…but still, they came from inside her, from a place that she'd been trying not to let herself completely lose.

_Though I have gone, I have not forgotten. Though I have gone, you have not forgotten me._

_I am come. You are not alone._

"No," murmured Minako. "No, no one should be alone…"

Then, from the depths of what was left of Minako's soul, something burst forth. The breath caught in her lungs and strained in her chest, as light flooded back through the portals of her soaking eyes. The world around her swam into horrible view, and she saw Tohru, now for the third time, lying on the floor, surrounded by pools of his own blood, with her sweater wrapped ridiculously around the hole that had been opened up in his chest. His eyes and mouth were both slightly open, and he was sickeningly still.

Yet, somehow, it wasn't his battered and stained form that got Minako's attention. The one thing that could have drawn her eye was now standing behind him, regarding her with a calm and unyielding stare that filled up her heart and soul with something that she didn't know she'd still been able to feel.

It was a mechanical form, neither man nor woman, but somehow both of them and all of them at the same time. One of its hands was clutched against its chest, while a large metal spike protruded from someplace just behind it's back. Every inch of it radiated an aura of confidence and peace, enough to quell even Minako's hastily beating heart.

"Messiah," she whispered. "Salvation."

The persona nodded once, and closed its eyes. Almost instinctively, Minako closed hers, as well. Something blinding and brilliant happened just in front of her eyelids, and when she hazarded to open them again, she saw Tohru's hand twitch, as he sucked a long, shaking breath back in through afflicted lungs.

"What…?" he muttered. "What happened?"

Minako turned to look for her persona, but it was gone. At least…she couldn't see it, anymore. She didn't have to. Now, for the first time in almost a year, she could feel it settled just inside her soul, filling her with safety, security, and the knowledge, so long lost, of who she really was. Junpei was right about her all along. Tohru was right about her, too. She was here to save them from themselves, from anything that threatened them or the fragile but magical peace that she'd worked so hard to create. That was her fate, her destiny, as much now as it had been when she'd first sacrificed herself for Nyx. She would never give that up. She couldn't. It was a part of her being.

"I…I saved you," she told Tohru, somewhat needlessly.

Tohru got slowly to his feet, and then looked down at the blood that was covering his clothes. The wounds, Minako realized, had healed and closed up, but the blood and sweat from that recent battle were still there.

"Oh…" he mumbled. "Uh, good. Because…this looks pretty damn bad…"

He started to walk over to her, and all of the tranquil majesty that Minako had become suddenly evaporated and gave way to exuberant humanity again. She threw herself into his arms, winding her own tightly around his neck and pressing him as close to her as she could. She wanted to feel his heart beating against hers, to feel how alive he was.

"Nice to see you, too," said Tohru, laughing.

Yes, thought Minako, as that penny dropped. She could see him. She could see everything, and the vision hadn't flickered, or wavered, or disappeared. This wasn't like those other times, when she'd been granted a cruel glimpse of the world, only to have it taken away from her again a moment later. She could see again. She could really see.

Shoving herself back from Tohru, she took a deep breath, and stared at him for several seconds, letting herself process all of the little visual pieces that she'd gotten through those two brief pictures of him she'd seen before. The intensity and focus of her gaze must have been clear to him, because he suddenly stiffened under her eyes.

"Wait," he said. "You…you're looking at me, aren't you?" She nodded, and for some reason, his face went pale. Holding up one hand to his face, he looked at the blood, then shook his head. "Shit," he mumbled. "Not now…not again." He ran one hand nervously through his hair, and Minako found herself smiling. She'd never seen him make that gesture before. It was endearing. She liked it.

Then, abruptly, he turned away from her. "Please, don't leave," he begged, under his breath. "Don't leave, Minako. I…I'll figure this out, I'll…"

There was that same note of panic in his voice that she'd heard in it when they'd listened together to that horrible place in the TV world. He sounded now just like he had when, in his younger days, he'd begged Hinata to stop crying.

"We can make this work," he said, as though he already knew that there was no point in meaning it.

Minako came up behind him, and wrapped both arms around his waist, resting her head against his back and closing her eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere," she assured him.

He turned around slowly to her, swallowing hard against something that he seemed to be trying to figure out how to say. Minako leaned in and kissed him softly. She felt his breath catch as he hastened to return the kiss.

"I had almost forgotten," remarked Minako, breaking away after a moment, "how much easier it is to do that when I can actually see where I'm going…"

Tohru laughed incredulously. "What," he said, "You mean, you could be better at that? I don't know, you were pretty good before…I can't wait to see where this goes."

She took his hand, and they began to walk together back through the world of his nightmares. Minako could see the eyes on the walls now, and the terrible silhouettes that passed through and behind things, raising the hackles on the back of her neck. There were screams, too, inhumanly human screams. How had she missed them the first time? She must have been too preoccupied with Tohru to be paying attention to anything else.

Abruptly, Tohru stopped, and she turned around to see him staring uncertainly at the eyes on the walls.

"It's not over," he muttered. "Okay, I'm not dead, but…I lost. I couldn't do it, I couldn't be the guy you wanted, I couldn't face up to it, in the end."

Minako shook her head, and squeezed his hand. "No," she corrected him, "You couldn't do it alone. Next time, you won't have to."

**Author's Note: **So…all that stuff I said in the Author's Note at the top of the page, about killing characters off?

…Just kidding. Got you!

Stay tuned for more of this story…because there are still so many problems that have to be resolved.

In the meantime, though, I'm gonna work on **Piecekeeping**. Updates over the next few days will be sporadic and infrequent, cause Dag's visiting for the week, but I''ll probably fit a little something in.

**Twenty Five - December 26**

**Author's Note: **I'm sorry about the long delay in updating this story. It's been a very, very busy week for me, and I'm afraid that it is only going to get busier.

I think that I am going to take a one week hiatus from updating this story. I need to take a break, do some re-plotting, refresh my ideas, and come back in a week, ready to look at this story again through newly rested eyes! Trust me, it won't be a very long break, but I think it'll be a better story for it.

In the meantime, I'm planning to write a couple of short stories in response to some challenges that my favorite readers have sent me. Hopefully those will be fun to read in the week's interim. Stay tuned, and thank you for your patience!

**Twenty Five – December 26**

Adachi was numb. Not physically numb, but emotionally numb. Physically, he knew that he should have been in terrible pain, judging from the horrible, bloody mess that his clothes and skin had become. The closer he and Minako got to the entrance to his nightmares, the more flashes of memory he managed to recall of the battle he'd stupidly tried to rage against the other side of himself. He remembered the rage and the powerful hunger that came with the pain, the way those shadows had screamed at him, and the thrills that had shot through him when he'd finally realized that he was going to have to watch himself die. There had been relief, there, amazingly welcome relief, but also terror as the instinct for self preservation had forced itself up through the loathing and tried to make itself heard just long enough to save his life. He remembered all of these things, but he couldn't really feel them. They were distant sort of nostalgic things, but nothing that was real. It was like they had happened to or been felt by someone else, even though he knew that didn't make sense.

He couldn't get much farther than that. His nerves and feelings, decided, must be so taxed from such a rollercoaster of unexpected self-torture that they were beginning to shut down. This time, though, it wasn't the emptiness of knowing that none of it mattered, and it wasn't the meaninglessness of having nothing to look forward to.

This time, Adachi was just tired. He was emotionally exhausted. Something had broken in his mind, and he felt disconnected, disjointed, as though certain circuits and emotional triggers were no longer attached in the right places. He felt listless and lost, but oddly calm, unable to access the parts of him that would have reacted in any other way.

"Tohru?" asked Minako, as she led him by the hand out through the door that went back into the Velvet Room. "You're so quiet…does it still hurt?"

Adachi just shook his head. "Uh,no, it's…it's fine. I'm fine." That, of course, wasn't true. He wasn't fine. He didn't feel like himself at all, which made sense, since one piece of himself had essentially just tried and failed to murder another piece, leaving him…where, exactly? What was the next step, after something like that? He felt stranded, as though he'd lost something, but he wasn't sure quite what it was. He was too tired to try to find it. All he wanted right now was to let Minako be in charge, for once. He wanted to leave himself alone for a few moments in the quiet of the abandoned battlefield that his psyche had become.

"Thank goodness," murmured Minako. Then, just as they stepped into the Velvet Room together, Adachi saw Minako's knees buckle. He didn't quite manage to catch her, this time, as she swayed dangerously, and then collapsed into a heap on the Velvet Room floor, right in front of Igor's chair.

Igor didn't even have the good graces to look surprised.

"Hey!" Adachi hurriedly knelt down beside her. "Hey, what's going on? Come on, blind girl, this'd be a bad time for you to crap out on me. I'm the one who got cut to pieces, right? So what's your excuse?"

Minako smiled a very faint little smile. "You can't call me that anymore," she reminded him, almost dreamily, closing her eyes and laying her head back against the floor. "I'm not blind…you'll have to think of a new nickname…"

"Don't worry, I'm good at those. It's kind of a skill," he retorted. "Here." He propped his arm under hers, throwing the other arm around her waist to help her back to her feet. Minako, however, didn't even try.

"I can't," she told him. "Please, Tohru, I'm so tired…"

"What are you so tired for?" he asked. "You're not the one who just got stabbed in the chest."

"Yeah," mumbled Minako. "I know. You're welcome."

Something in the back of Adachi's mind, maybe something that he'd picked up in his training or at the police academy was telling him that he had to keep her talking. If she went to sleep and blacked out on him, it might be too late. He had to keep provoking her long enough to force her to stay conscious.

"It's all right," said Igor's voice. "The effort of using her persona again has drained her of her strength. It is safe here; no shadows are welcome in this place. Let her sleep."

All of Adachi's instincts were crying out against that idea, but he could already tell by the change in Minako's breathing that he'd lost his opportunity to try and keep her awake. She lay there calmly, with her chest rising and falling very slightly, and Adachi was struck, not for the first time, with how dangerously innocent and vulnerable she was willing to let herself be around him. The memory of what his shadow self had said to him in the Velvet Room came rushing back, and the bile began to rise in Adachi's throat as he tried not to think about the horrible things that he knew part of him still wanted to do to her, just for being naïve and trusting enough to give him that opportunity.

"It is most impressive," continued Igor, through and around Adachi's inner monologue, "that our guest has managed such a feat. After having given up one half of her soul, she has found the strength to awaken one last persona, one that continues to reside in the piece of her that was not taken by the Seal. It was her desire to save you that reawakened her knowledge of her true purpose, that purpose allowed Messiah to be reborn."

Adachi just shook his head. None of that made a lot of sense to him. All of this crap about reawakening the true self sounded like something those idiot kids that Narukami ran with would say. There was nothing tangible about it, like so much of the shit that came out of Igor's mouth. Instead, Adachi asked the one question that seemed really important to him at the moment.

"What's wrong with her?" he demanded. "Why'd she pass out like that?"

"Ah," intoned Igor. "I'm afraid that her soul is still weak. As only half of what her soul once was remains available to her, her persona has only half the power that it used to have, and there is very little strength for it to draw upon. Every use of her power is taxing to her, intensely taxing. It might take days for her recover from a spell as powerful as the one she risked to bring you back."

"So…I did this," muttered Adachi. "I hurt her, huh?"

Suddenly, there was something sharper and more shrewd in Igor's stare. Adachi sat back involuntarily as Igor's eyes bore straight into him.

"Yes," murmured Igor, after a moment's apparently consideration. "It is, after all, what you wanted."

"No!" Adachi almost shouted that. "Shit, I never-!"

"Ah, but you did," insisted Igor. "At least, the part of you that remained behind had every desire to damage this girl."

Igor turned his head and gazed significantly at the entrance to the nightmare room. Adachi followed his gaze, and found himself biting his lip in frustration as he stared at the door.

"So," he muttered. "I'm still in there, huh? I'm still in there, waiting for me to come back. Is that it?"

"Yes," agreed Igor, nodding. "You do feel it, do you not? The weakness, the confusion…it stems from the loss of one part of yourself. Without it, you can never be whole."

Adachi couldn't lie to himself. He'd known that already, somehow. He'd realized it the moment that his shadow self had left, and had taken with it his persona and an intrinsic part of who he, Tohru Adachi, really was. The emotional exhaustion that he felt now, and the struggle to put the pieces together came from that, somehow.

Despite knowing all those things, he fought it. What else, he wondered, could he do? "I don't have to be that guy," he whispered, more to himself than to Igor. "I don't need those parts of me…I could be worth something without them."Looking down at Minako's sleeping face, he wondered if he could be worth something to her, without them. Wasn't that, after all, what she'd asked him to do? Hadn't she wanted him to find out what he could be if he could get rid of the other part of himself? That was the whole point in his coming here, and if he had to go back and kill that thing again, then he'd find a way to do it.

Slowly, Igor just shook his head, and gave Adachi a variant of his usual disappointed look. "It is impossible," Igor informed him. "That shadow is a part of who you are. You are not yourself without it."

"No," growled Adachi, unwilling to accept it. "Look, I used to be somebody else, I used to be a better guy. I used to…"

He stopped. The ugly truth, he realized, was that he couldn't remember what he'd used to be. That didn't matter anymore. What mattered now was who he was.

"And," added Igor, as though he'd interrupted the flow of Adachi's thoughts, "who you may become."

"She could love me like this," insisted Adachi, desperately."I…I know she could. I could show her that I'm…"

"Like this," returned Igor, "there is no 'you' at all."

There was a long silence, during which both of them, apparently, watched as Minako slept blissfully away.

"So," asked Adachi eventually. "What's next? What am I supposed to do now?"

By way of an answer, Igor just looked across the room at the door.

"Yeah," sighed Adachi. "I figured it'd be something like that."

**Some time later, still in the Velvet Room…**

Minako opened her eyes, and saw the world.

The colors and shapes were dazzling and exciting…and they almost instantly gave her a headache. A sharp pain in her right temple reminded her abruptly that it had been a very long time since her mind had been used to handling the visual spectrum of anything and everything that the big bold world had to offer. It was difficult to figure out what to look at first, and her eyes tried to drink in everything, she started to get dizzy from the intensity of it all. Why, she wondered, hadn't she felt like this before? Maybe, now that she was out of danger, now that the fight or flight response had worn away, she was really starting to feel the aftermath of everything that had happened.

"Tohru?" she asked, peering around through the dizzy, shiny feelings, and the pain in her head. She heard his footsteps coming closer to her, and then she found him, walking over towards her from the direction of the nightmare doors.

"Oh, you're awake," he said. "How's your head?"

Minako frowned. "It hurts," she admitted.

"Yeah…" Tohru sighed. "Igor figured it would. Sorry about that."

"What were you doing?" she asked him. "You're not going back in there, are you?"

"Hey," he told her, giving her a little half-smile, "That's why we're here, right? Told you' I'd go in there and face myself…so, I guess I've gotta be an honest man about it. After all, we did promise."

"I thought you were proud of being a dishonest man," Minako reminded him. She was worried. Something about him didn't seem right. He was…off, somehow, although she couldn't quite decide what had given her that impression.

"Yeah, well," laughed Tohru, "I, uh…I don't really know what I am, right now."

He sounded so sad, and sort of confused. Instinctively, Minako stood up and went to him. "We'll go together," she assured him.

"You're tired," he told her. "Look, you can barely stand up straight. Don't be stupid, okay? You wore yourself out the last time you had to save my ass. Let me handle this one."

Minako just shook her head. Tohru sighed, and then put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She closed her eyes, but felt strange. There was nothing real in the way he was holding her, now, nothing like the passion of the times she'd spent with him when he'd been so eager to touch her or to have her close to him, so eager that sometimes it had almost frightened her.

"I'm sorry," he told her.

Minako didn't understand. "For what?" she asked.

**Twenty Six - December 26**

**Author's Note: **Sound the trumpets! Thus is the triumphant return of Adachi and Minako! I'm going to be alternating the **Piecekeeping** and **Messiah** updates for a few days, still, but today seems to be an Adachi day, since I'm finishing up a story in **Disenchanted – The Complete Cho Yanase Continuity**, and finally posting a chapter to **Messiah** again at the same time!

Thank you so much for everyone who has been reading, it's such a pleasure to see that you're enjoying this stuff. Also, please, please, please go check out **Yuruya-sama**'s deviantart page, as well as **Kira-Tsume**'s deviangart page, as both of them have been kind and wonderful enough to draw some artwork for my stories! They are both super talented…actually, you may know **Kira-Tsume** better as **Gin Nanashi**, the talented author of one of my favorite stories, **Memories of You **(which she co-authored with the wonderful **ReachingoutFES!**).

Okay, enough talk, time for story. Here goes.

**Twenty Six – December 26**

"Wait, Tohru!" called Minako, hurrying after him and grabbing a hold of his wrist as he turned away. "Stop, you're not going in there. I won't let you."

Tohru raised an eyebrow at her. "Yeah? Why's that?" He tried to shake her off, but she didn't budge.

"I told you," she insisted, clinging to him and trying not to think too hard about the pictures in her head of him bleeding out and gasping for a last breath of life on the floor. "You don't have to do this alone."

"Look, Minako," he muttered, running a hand uncomfortably along the back of his neck. "You don't understand. This…this is it. I mean, it's been fun, and all, but…the game's over. I tried for you, I really did, but, I lost."

"_You_ may have lost," interrupted Minako stubbornly, "but _we_ didn't. If you're going back in, then I'm going in with you, and I dare you to try and stop me, Tohru. I'd really like to see you try."

Tohru glared at her, although it was a tired, lackluster glare that had none of his usual defiant spark. It frustrated Minako and frightened her, and she started pulling him forward towards the nightmare door before he had a chance to come up with any more protests.

"Fine," she told him, as they passed through the walls full of unblinking eyes, and rooms full of eerie, shadowy screams that were somehow everywhere and nowhere at the same time. "If you want to end this, then we'll end it, right here and now. Okay? I'm tired of watching you make yourself miserable, it's enough already."

Minako knew before she saw him that she'd find Shadow Adachi exactly where she'd found Tohru dying only hours before. He'd be waiting for them, she knew, because he was a part of Tohru, connected to him, aware of how he was feeling, and so he'd be ready and waiting to deal the finishing blow to Tohru's ego as soon as he had anything close to an opportunity. As Minako and Tohru approached, Shadow Adachi straightened up from where he'd been slumped against the wall, looking bored and listless. It was only when he caught Minako's gaze on him that some malicious light flared up in his yellow eyes.

"No way," he spat at them both. "Seriously? You're gonna let a girl fight your battles for you? You piece of shit, what the hell has she turned you into? You make me sick."

Minako watched Tohru wince, watch him fall back slightly as something about Shadow Adachi's words touched a piece of his soul that he couldn't disconnect from. She frowned, then took a deep breath and went on without him.

"This masochism has to stop," she told Shadow Adachi, as calmly as she could. "You're tearing yourself apart. There's no end to this. You won't get anything out of it."

"Oh, great, now I'm getting a lecture?" drawled Shadow Adachi. "Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"I'm someone who cares about you," said Minako, feeling strange and more than a little disturbed by the sensation of speaking to someone in front of her who she could see, out of the corner of her eye, was also watching her from somewhere behind.

Shadow Adachi let out of one his mirthless, derisive laughs. "You care about me, huh? Well, isn't that just great. You're a fucking Good Samaritan, you know that? What did you call your persona? 'Messiah?' You wanna save the whole fucking world? I got news for you; there's not much out there worth saving. You're wasting your time and energy, both on the rest of the world, and on me. Get the hell out while you still can, before I make you wish you'd let me die when you had the chance. Oh, and I will, you know. I can hurt you in all sorts of fun little ways that you've never even thought about. You're too 'pure and good' for that sort of shit. No, you're in for a surprise."

"I'm not afraid of you," Minako told him calmly. "I know you'd never hurt me. You can't."

"Oh, I can't, can I? Really? Okay let me let you in on a little secret. Do you know what I think about when I look at you? What I was thinking about when I got you to fuck me for the first time?"

"No," rasped Tohru. Minako felt his hand close into a vice around her arm. She covered his hand with hers to try and reassure him.

"I was thinking about those women that I tried to have," snarled Shadow Adachi. "You know, the ones that I tried to rape. The ones that I got sick of and threw away because they bored me. I was thinking about the looks on their stupid faces when I started in on them. Sometimes I fantasize about what you'd look like if I just got the chance to-!"

"Shut the fuck up!" screamed Tohru. He was breathing hard, now, and Minako looked down to see that his knuckles on her arm were turning white. He turned to face her, and when their eyes met the suddenly let go of her and stumbled backwards, staring at her with desperation and something like nausea in his eyes. Minako felt a little bit sick to her own stomach, listening to those awful words coming out of the mouth of a man that she thought she might be starting to love. The idea of him looking at her with those awful, hungry eyes, and imagining the things he could do to her sent cold, disquieting shivers down her usually so stoic spine.

Tohru had clenched both of his fists and was holding them at his sides, not looking at her. It was amazing and surreal, she mused, just how much one person could be of two minds.

"I could tear you apart, you dumbass kid," Shadow Adachi was saying. "I could rip you to pieces and smile while you bleed, and moan, and cry like you had no idea what I was capable of. I've done it before. I could-!"

"Then do it," murmured Minako.

Shadow Adachi stopped talking. He looked surprised, for a moment. Tohru, too, looked up at her in shock.

"What the hell?" asked Shadow Adachi. "Did you just-?"

"I said," repeated Minako, a little bit more loudly and with a little bit more confidence than she was sure she actually felt, "Do it. Hurt me. Break me. Do all of those things that you say that you can do. I want to see it, I want you to prove it to me."

She stood there, staring Shadow Adachi down, and he gradually began to look more uncertain and frustrated. Gritting his teeth, yellow eyes flashing with rage, he took a step forward, and then suddenly found himself flung backwards, as though some invisible thread had jerked him by the neck and thrown him to the ground. He lay there for a second, then sat up slowly and stared at something just past Minako's shoulder.

When Minako followed his gaze, she found that Tohru was glaring daggers at him, eyes dark and cold with bitter determination.

"You see?" she asked, turning back to Shadow Adachi. "You can't, can you? You can't do any of it." She spun around, bringing her face to face with Tohru., "Because _you_ can't do it. There's more to you than you think. I know who you are. You're enough of a man to hold yourself back from the horrible, darker parts of you. I know that's true. I believe in you. I trust you. That's all there is. You don't have to beat yourself up about it anymore. You're a better man than you were when you hurt those women. You're a better man than you've let yourself be, before. It's time for that to change."

Tohru and Shadow Adachi continued to look into each other's eyes, both of them frozen in a moment that even Minako couldn't interfere with.

"Damnit," muttered Tohru.

Shadow Adachi rolled his eyes. "Jeez," he muttered. "What a drag…"

Shadow Adachi sighed, nodded once, and then slowly vanished into a glittering mass that had Minako, unused to any sort of light or brilliance, shielding her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, Tohru was crouching on the ground, holding something that looked like a persona card in his right hand.

"Nah," he said, "this isn't right. This isn't…"

Minako reached over and took the card from him. There was a picture of Magatsu Izanagi on it.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I…uh, I'm not sure," mumbled Tohru. "Wasn't this supposed to change, or something? I mean, wasn't there supposed to be some sort of epic re-awakening where I suddenly figure that I'm really a knight in shining armor after all?" He scowled, shaking his head. "Crap, was this all for nothing? What the hell was the point?"

Minako used his shoulder for leverage as she reached up to kiss him on the cheek. He flinched and then blushed instantly as she touched him, and she smiled, glad to see that he was both talking and acting a little bit more like the Tohru that she'd come to expect .

"The point," she told him, "is that now, it really is over. You're the same person you've always been. That was never supposed to change. You just needed to understand the different parts of yourself well enough to realize who you really are. Maybe I needed that, too."

As they walked back through the nightmare room together, Tohru stuck his hands in his pockets and spent some time watching the eyeballs on the walls. When he looked at Minako and opened his mouth, she expected him to come out with something witty, pithy, and potentially alarming.

"Hey," he said instead. "For the record…you standing up to the other me like that was insanely hot. Did I ever tell how good you look when you're pissed off?"

Minako laughed with some combination of relief and exasperation.

"Yes," she said, perhaps more to herself than to Tohru. "That's my Tohru. Nothing's changed."

He raised an eyebrow at her, and there was a gleam in his eye that sent a totally different kind of chill down her spine.

"Huh," he began, "so, about the way you said that…if I'm 'your Tohru,' does that make you 'mine?'"

They were out in the Velvet Room again by now, and as soon as she turned around to answer him, he snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. For just a moment, Minako felt herself flinch involuntarily as she caught a glimpse in his eyes of Shadow Adachi, the man that fantasized about things she couldn't even begin to imagine.

Tohru must have noticed her reaction, because the leer tumbled off his face and gave way to an uncertain, lost sort of grimace that made Minako curse herself for having let him see her doubt him.

"Forget it," he muttered, letting go of her. "Just…um…I get it. You're freaked out. You'd be nuts if you weren't'. You don't have to-!"

Before Minako had a chance to say any of the reassuring things that were on the tip of her tongue, she heard a door behind her open. She and Tohru both turned around, to find Yosuke, Junpei, and the entire investigation team all staring at them from the Velvet Room doorway.

"Aw, hell," muttered Junpei under his breath. His eyes met Minako's, and she swallowed hard.

"What the-?" began Yosuke.

**Twenty Seven - Collision**

**Author's Note: **Oookay…so now I have to write this. *sigh* Nothing for it, I wrote the damn plot for this thing, no one to blame but myself. Let's just get this over with….

I should warn you, this story is going to finish up in a couple of chapters, and it is going to end on an ugly cliffhanger. That was the original plan, and I'm sticking to it. There will be more stories that continue this arc, although in a slightly different format than the stuff I usually write, so please stay tuned for more information.

Also, don't get too incensed about the way Dojima behaves in this chapter. There's more for him on the horizon…in fact, so much more that he may need his own story, so for now, let's focus on the rest of what's going on here.

**Twenty Seven – December 26**

Minako felt Tohru tense up even as they rapidly left each other's arms. He spun around to stare at Yosuke, who was staring back at them both with some combination of disbelief and betrayal in his eyes that made something twist horribly in the pit of Minako's stomach.

"What the hell-?" began Yosuke.

"Wait," interrupted Junpei, stepping forward and almost shoving Yosuke out of the way. "Hang on a second. Something's not right."

"You're telling me something's not right. Am I crazy, did it just look like-?" Yosuke started again.

Junpei wasn't paying any attention to him. In a rush, he made his way across the room until he was right in front of Minako. "Mina-tan," he said. "Look at me."

Obediently, Minako tore her eyes away from Yosuke's face and looked directly at Junpei.

Junpei drew in a sharp breath, then put both of his hands on her shoulders and stared hard into her eyes.

"Holy hell," he breathed. "You can see, right? You can…you can fucking see. Hey," he asked, putting one hand in the air right next to Minako's face. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Um…five?" hazarded Minako, uncertain if she was supposed to interpret his frantically shaking hand in the air as a set of five fingers.

Junpei let out a triumphant bark of laughter, then suddenly grabbed her and pulled her into a rough hug that knocked the wind out of her for a moment and left her gasping. Something wet fell on her shoulder, and she looked up to see Junpei sniffling and wiping a hand quickly across his face."

"Junpei," she began, but Junpei shook his head at her to cut her off.

"Don't say anything," he muttered. "Just…hey, you know what, there's nothing unmanly about it, okay? I'm just…there are just a lot of feelings, and…whatever, it doesn't matter, you can fucking see!"

For a moment, Minako couldn't think of anything to say. "Wow, Junpei," she whispered finally, trying to squeeze a hint of teasing into her voice. "You really do seem to cry a lot these days…"

"Shut up," muttered Junpei. "It's probably your damn fault…"

"Oh, Minako!" called Yukari, running over and completely ignoring Junpei in her quest to give Minako an enthusiastic hug. "It's so wonderful!"

One by one, each of the other members of SEES came over to give Minako their warmest congratulations. She was having trouble keeping her own eyes dry as Fuuka, Ken, Aigis, Mitsuru, and even Koro joined her to give her their heartfelt congratulations. There was something particularly gratifying about the embrace she received from Akihiko, who looked at her with pride in his eyes as he gave her shoulder a squeeze, and told her, "It's great to have you back." Somehow, it was more than just good to know that after everything, he was still on her side, even if that meant something totally different from what it had done before. It was a satisfying relief to realize just how full circle things had managed to come for them, and she felt a tinge of regret, even in the midst of her joy, that she hadn't been able to find that with Shinjiro. She missed him, suddenly. For the first time since they'd all co me back to Inaba together, the scene felt emptier without him.

"Yaaay!" shouted Nanako, barreling towards the throng, and being stopped just short of running straight into Minako by Mitsuru's cautiously outstretched arm. "You're okay! Just like Big Bro!"

"Big Bro?" asked Minako, frowning. She looked past Nanako, into the slowly smiling faces of the rest of the investigation team, and suddenly realized that Yu was standing there with them. He was actually standing there, not sitting or riding in his chair, but standing up and beaming at her over the heads of the others.

"Oh, Yu!" breathed Minako, overjoyed. She ran to him, and they stood and looked at each other for a moment, again, even after so much time, uncertain how to put their remarkable, unfathomable shared experience into words that anyone else would understand.

"Congratulations," murmured Yu.

Minako bit her lip, afraid that she, too, might start crying the way Junpei had tried and failed not to do. "I'm so happy," she told him, for want of any better way to put it. "It worked on you, too…and now everything's going to be all right, again. We're going to be okay, and things are going to go back to the way they were supposed to be. It's…it's really over."

Yu nodded. "You have to tell me how it happened," he insisted. "Maybe not right now, but sometime soon. We can compare notes…I want to know if it was the same for you."

Minako nodded. "Of course," she said. "Maybe we should go home, regroup, and then you can tell me what-!"

"No," shouted Yosuke, so loudly and emphatically that all other conversations stopped as both teams turned to stare at him, open-mouthed. He was still standing in the doorway, not having moved an inch from where he'd been when they'd first come in. His eyes were fixed on Minako's face, and he didn't look excited, or relieved. Instead, he looked furious. Minako swallowed hard, as his eyes bore into every inch of her face, demanding something with that look that she wasn't sure how to answer to. "You can tell us all right now," he continued, his voice stony and clipped, as he gritted out each word through uncompromising teeth. "What the fuck is going on here? I want to know what you're doing here with him." He shot a look of pure poison in Tohru's direction, then immediately faced back to Minako, making it clear that Tohru wasn't the real problem here. She was the problem, and even Minako knew, through the sinking feeling inside her, that she did owe him some answers.

"Hey, Yosuke," began Yu, holding one hand up placatingly. "Look, now's not the-!"

"No, its okay," Minako insisted, shaking her head. "I don't mind. Yosuke deserves to know the truth…you all do." She looked around at her assembled friends, then glanced back at Tohru for support, but found him staring at her expectantly, as if just as anxious to hear what she was about to say as all the rest of them were.

That was a bit unsettling..

"Yosuke," she started again, taking a deep breath, "Tohru and I were both-!"

"Tohru," spat Yosuke, interrupting her and stopping her dead with the disappointed venom in his voice. "Jeez, you call him fucking Tohru…when did the two of you start using first names, huh? When did that start being a thing?"

Suddenly, Rise gasped. "Oh, no, I remember," she announced. "That guy…that guy you told us about. He was…Adachi was the guy!"

Now Chie, Rise and Yukiko were all staring at her accusingly as well. She vaguely remembered a conversation she'd had with them once before, about an "older man" that she was interested in when she and Shinjiro had still been together. The memory of the way she'd handled that situation made her a bit sick to her stomach with embarrassment and guilt, and she had a hard time meeting Yosuke's eyes when she again looked up to try and complete her explanation.

"Yosuke, please," she begged him. "Without Tohru, I never would have regained my sight, or my persona. He's the reason that-!"

"He's the reason that all of this went down in the first place!' shouted Yosuke, apparently losing control of whatever cool or composure he'd had left. "He's the one who killed all those people! Saki-senpai…" For a moment, Yosuke closed his eyes, and Minako could see the pain etched in his face that showed up there whenever he had the courage to breathe that girl's name. "He's the reason the world's the way it is. He's the reason we had to fight for all of this!"

Minako shook her head. "You're wrong, Yosuke. You're wrong, it was Nyx that started this whole mess. It was Nyx that got Yu caught up in the seal, and it was Nyx that we had to-!"

"If it hadn't been for that murderous son of a bitch, we never would have needed our personas," shouted Yosuke, now livid with rage. "We never would have had to fight the shadows, we never would have even met or had to get mixed up with or deal with you people! None of this would have happened!"

"Yosuke," breathed Rise in shock. A dull murmur started in the ranks of the investigation team, although Minako couldn't make out any distinct words.

Yosuke began advancing on Minako, and she felt the other members of SEES instinctively close ranks around her as he approached.

"Without him," snarled Yosuke, "Yu would never have had to die."

"That was one side of him," murmured Minako, her courage starting to leave her the closer that Yosuke got. She was frightened, suddenly, really and truly frightened of someone she'd thought of as a friend and even a 'partner' only minutes before. "Everyone has-!"

"Don't you dare tell me that everyone has bad sides too," grated Yosuke." Don't you fucking dare…because not everybody's bad side is a murderer. Not everybody's bad side is a monster, like him, okay? We have a choice. We all have a choice." Glancing back at Yu, Yosuke shook his head. "I had a choice. I had a choice to kill you, when Yu was in danger, or to let you live. I let you live." Biting down hard on his lip, he shook his head, as though trying to shake something awful out of it."Maybe that was the wrong choice, huh? Maybe I should have let you die."

The next series of events happened very, very quickly, so quickly that Minako barely had time to catch her breath. Junpei suddenly stepped around the others and punched Yosuke hard in the face. Yosuke, unprepared for the assault, staggered back into Naoto, who caught and supported him while Chie, Yukiko, Kanji, Teddie, and Rise formed up around Yosuke. SEES and the investigation team stood opposite each other, each protecting their leader, staring each other down. Minako began to panic, wondering how she'd lost control of this situation and how she could stop things before the devolved into even more of the chaos that pitted friend against friend in the way this seemed to be promising to do.

"You take that back," muttered Junpei, placing a protective arm around Minako's shoulders. "You take that back, or I swear I'll-!"

"You'll what?" spat Yosuke."You'll what, huh? Go on, bring it, I've been waiting for a chance to tangle with you. I owe you for what you did to Nanako, and for what Minako did to-!"

"ENOUGH!"

The bellow came from the doorway, and stopped everyone dead in their tracks. Minako looked up to see Dojima standing in the entrance to the Velvet Room, with a sobbing Nanako clinging to his leg.

From just behind Minako, Tohru muttered, "Dojima-san." He stepped forward, as though potentially heading for the doorway, but Dojima immediately recoiled from him, with a look on his face that Minako could only identify as a combination of tired confusion and disgust. The two of them stood there for what felt like forever, gazes locked as Dojima's mouth opened and closed once or twice in what might have been attempts at speech, or just fish-faced disbelief.

"It's…it's enough," mumbled Dojima into the subsequent silence. "I can't deal with any more of this. It's over. It's…done now. Let's just get out of here. That's an order."

Turning on his heel, Dojima half led and half dragged Nanako away from the door, and back into the real world. Shooting one last hate-laden glance at Minako and Junpei, Yosuke was quick to follow suit. Before long, the rest of the investigation had shuffled out as well, except for Rise, who was still standing and watching Junpei with a conflicted look on her face.

"Junpei," she murmured, reaching hesitantly out to him.

Junpei just shrugged. "Go on," he mumbled, turning away from her. "Get out of here. Your friends are gonna worry, or something."

Rise looked hurt for a moment, and opened her mouth like there was something she wanted to say, but Junpei kept his back to her, and she eventually frowned, sighed, and then hurried off to follow the rest of her team.

Junpei, however, wasn't finished. Rounding on Tohru, who was still standing stock-still in the midst of SEES, he raised an accusing eyebrow. "What the hell was that?" he asked. "Where were you? I thought you cared about her. Why the hell didn't you do anything?"

Tohru looked harassed. "What did you want me to do? Nothing I could do…you think it'd help if I started messing with that Hanamura kid? You're a dumbass. Like my beating up on your friends was gonna solve anything…jeez. Probably just end up making it worse…not that I care what they think. Bunch of obnoxious kids…"

He looked at Minako for support, but she suddenly found that she couldn't meet his eyes. She was angry, angry that he hadn't found a way to make her feel better, to or to make them understand what she and Tohru meant to each other. Of course, she knew, the anger didn't make sense. It was illogical, since in the end, Tohru was probably right. Anything he might have said would probably have made the situation worse. Still…he'd just stood there while Yosuke had railed at her, railed at her about things she'd done with him. Somehow, she'd wanted more, even if she wasn't sure just exactly what that "more" was.

"Some kind of Romeo you are," muttered Junpei, shaking his head at Tohru. "Figures. Not that I expected much."

**Twenty Eight - The Future**

**Twenty Eight – The Future**

After the investigation team had left, it didn't take long for SEES to start muttering amongst themselves.

"I can't believe he'd say that you to you," announced Yukari, clearly incensed, her eyes flashing. "How the…after everything that you've done for him, and the way you did all you could to help Yu! You were gonna…." She swallowed, apparently unwilling to finish that particular thought. "Did he forget everything that happened that year? The way you were going to throw your life away?"

"Again," mumbled Junpei. Yukari shot him a quelling look.

Minako shook her head. She felt heavy and miserable, still picturing the look in Yosuke's accusing eyes when he'd shouted at her that he would have been better off if he'd left her for dead. "No," she murmured. "No, he…he hasn't forgotten. I don't think he'll ever forget. Yosuke's the kind to hold a grudge. It hurt him so much, when he thought that he was going to lose Yu forever. This has all hurt him more than I think any of us can really understand."

"Speak for yourself," interjected Junpei again. Minako glanced at him, and saw the closed, contemplative look on his face.

"I suspect," said Mitsuru," that it would be unwise, under the circumstances, for Arisato to remain in this hostile environment. Perhaps it would be best for her to return to the island with us, for the time being."

The rest of SEES seemed to be in general agreement with that. "That's a good idea," said Fuuka, nodding. "After all, the things that you needed to do here are finished, aren't they? Now that you have your sight back, and your persona as well, then…I guess that's it. It seems like it's time."

"Wait, hang on!" insisted Junpei. "What about me? You're not just gonna leave me here all alone, are you? Mina-tan, come on, have a heart…"

In an uncharacteristic display of affection, Yukari put an arm around Junpei's shoulders. "Don't be an idiot, Stupei. You're coming too, obviously. Let's all go home together. That's the way it was always supposed to be, right? All of us, together at the end. It didn't look like it was possible before, but…now Fuuka's right, it's time to live the rest of our lives, just the way we wanted to."

Minako looked into all the eager, smiling faces of her friends, and her heart went out to them. The idea of being able to live the life she'd always wanted, together with the people she cared about most in the world was something that she'd never even been able to seriously contemplate before. They were right, she realized. It was all over. She was alive, she was whole again, and Nyx was trapped, presumably forever. The world was waiting for her to make her way through it, to create the future for herself and for her friends that she'd never been allowed to have. Even when there had been hope on the horizon, as there had been so many times over the last few miserable, magical years, she'd never had the surety that everything would come out all right. Now, she really had reached the end of her journey, and the light was visible at the end of the tunnel.

Yet, at the same time, something ached inside her. In her ideal image of how the future was supposed to be, she was standing alongside all of her friends, including the new, Inaba friends with whom she'd forged such seemingly tight and intimate bonds throughout the recent ordeals. When she really thought about it, Minako knew that she wasn't willing to give up on what she had with Yosuke, Yu, Rise, and the others. Nothing would ever feel truly right again if she did. She'd made this mess for herself, and she'd never be able to live with herself if she left it behind and didn't make the effort to re-forge the bonds that had meant so much to her for so long.

"I don't know," mumbled Junpei. "That's a big move, and a big decision…it's a tough one. What do you say, Minako? You leaving?"

"I…don't know," she admitted. "I can't think straight, not right now. Besides, part of it really depends on you. It wouldn't be worth it without you," she assured him. "I don't want a future that you're not in."

Junpei grinned, a bit sheepishly. "Hell," he admitted, "it's not like I'm really all that attached to this place anyway. It was different when Chidori was around, but…hey, there's other stuff out there for me, now. I'm game to blow this joint if that's what you want. Might be good for us both."

Minako closed her eyes. Yes, she thought. It would be wonderful to go back to Iwatodai with the others, and pretend that none of this had ever taken place. She might even be almost happy that way, but never completely happy. No, there were some things that she just couldn't leave behind.

Out of the corner of her eye, Minako saw Tohru, still standing a few feet away, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

"Excuse me," she said to her friends. "I'm sorry, I…think I just need a moment alone, if that's okay. I promise, I won't be too long."

Yukari's eyes strayed to Tohru's face as well, and apparently she understood, because it didn't' take her very long to rally the others and to usher them back out of the Velvet Room door into the real world. Only Junpei remained behind, glaring skeptically at Tohru.

"You sure?" he asked her. "Cause I can stay."

Minako gave him a reassuring smile. "I'm sure," she insisted. "I'll be fine. Please. I'll be along soon."

Throwing up his hands in a gesture of defeat, Junpei shook his head and then jogged off to join the others.

Tohru and Minako stood across from each other for a moment, finally alone.

"Jeez," muttered Tohru. "That…was pretty intense, huh?"

"Why didn't you say anything?" asked Minako. "When Yosuke was talking about you, and about…about us, why didn't you speak up?"

Tohru gave her a long, searching look, then glanced down at his hands with a strange sort of downcast expression in his eyes. He cleared his throat.

"I was waiting for you to go first," he mumbled.

Minako blinked. "What?"

"I was waiting," repeated Tohru, slightly louder this time, "for you to look that Hanamura guy in the eye and tell him to go to hell because of how you feel about me. This whole time, we've been playing this weird, twisted game where you're the savior of the goddamn world and I'm the victim of some cosmic injustice. You get off on that shit…and that's fine. I get it. But…" He frowned for a moment, took a deep breath, and then shook his head before meeting Minako's gaze again. "After the other night, when I freaked out on you and asked you to be with me, I thought we'd sorted this shit out. I thought we were on the same page. But…when you started talking to Hanamura, all you said to him was that people have different sides, and that it wasn't my fault, and…it was like you were talking about the whole fucking world, again, and not about me at all."

"I don't understand what you-!" began Minako.

Tohru cut her off impatiently. "No, you do. Don't play that innocent shit with me. You get it, and so does that friend of yours, Iori."

Minako was starting to get angry. What was this all about, all of a sudden? Hadn't he seen what had just happened, what she'd had to go through for him? "I gave up everything for you!' she insisted.

"Yeah?" asked Tohru, crossing his arms. "That so? Did you? Or did you give it all up just to prove a point? Just to make it clear that you were right about me, and they were wrong? That everybody's human, and that you know how to tell up from down and right from wrong? I'm not a nice guy, damnit, I'm a selfish asshole, and I want this. I want this to be about me, not about saving the world and every sucker in it."

He reached for her suddenly, and pulled her to him, kissing her angrily and passionately with a crazy light in his eyes that reminded her of what she'd already told him to accept in himself. "You feel that?" he asked breathlessly, releasing her and leaving her swaying unsteadily in place. "That's what I want. I want you. I don't want a messiah, or the goddamn second coming. I don't wanna be saved, I want you. I want you to need me, to crave what it feels like to have me touch you, to think about me when you're trying hard as hell not to."

Minako opened her mouth to answer him, but he didn't let her even get the words out.

"Listen," he muttered. "You go find Hanamura, and you tell him that it's got nothing to do with right and wrong, or with what people are really made of. You tell him you're in love with me. You come back and I'll be here. Hell, it's not like there's anywhere else for me to go."

Tohru turned and started walking off, back into the recesses of the Velvet Room, towards the nightmare doors. Just before disappearing from sight, he stopped.

"But if you can't do it," he muttered, still not turning around, "then don't bother coming back. Probably better for both of us if you don't. If there isn't something here worth throwing it all away for, then don't bother. Give it time, they'll forgive you. Goody two shoes brats like that usually do."

He paused for a moment, and Minako was sure he'd finished. Then, suddenly, and a bit more quietly, he added, "Besides…you're the kind of kid it's not hard to love. And hey, coming from me, that's really saying something."

Tohru pushed open the nightmare door, and then stepped through, closing it silently behind him on the other side. Minako stood there staring at it for a moment, wondering why she couldn't find it in herself to say the words she needed to say to fix whatever nonsensical fiasco had just taken place.

Footsteps behind her made her turn around again, and she saw that Yu was walking towards her through the Velvet Room.

"Minako," he said. "I'm sorry. Listen, I'll talk to Yosuke. It'll be all right. I know he's angry now, but…"

Minako just shook her head. Her head felt heavy, and suddenly she was very, very tired. "No," she told him, "don't worry about it. I'll…I'll handle things with Yosuke. I created this, now I have to…figure it out. I know that's the way it's supposed to work."

"You don't have to do it alone," Yu reminded her, smiling.

The smile, for some reason, didn't make Minako feel any better. She could hear the echo of her own words in Yu's, something she'd told her friends and even Tohru so many times. Still, at this moment she felt more alone than she ever had before, and the knowledge that she'd done all of this to herself only made it worse. She'd wanted everything, and ended up with what felt an awful lot like nothing.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better," she told him honestly, doing her best to smile back. "Go have fun with your friends. I'll fix this, I promise. It'll be all right."

Yu looked uncertain. "Are you sure? You really don't look so good."

Minako didn't feel exactly "good," either, but the longer she spent thinking about it, the more secure she was in the knowledge that there would, there must be a way to make this right. After all, she reminded herself, if there was anything that this whole experience had taught her it was that there were some things so powerful that they couldn't under any circumstances be broken.

She and Yu stood together in the Velvet Room, in between the doors through which their friends had left and the place that Tohru had stalked off to after delivering his parting shot. Yu didn't say anything, but Minako could feel the way his very presence had a calming effect on her, the same calming, positive effect that she knew it must have on his team and the people who followed him. That was one of the things that made him an amazing leader; the ability to calm the storms and fix the things that were broken.

She had been a leader once too, and as she watched Yu's face, she realized that it was time, had been time for a while now for her to become one again. She understood people, understood how they worked and what the things were that hurt or helped them. She cared about people, and she wanted more than anything to mend the bonds to bring the ones she loved back together. That was who she was and what she needed to move on. That was her reason, and the future wouldn't exist of she couldn't have that. There was more to life than being alive. In the end, nothing mattered if she had to be alone.

"Yes," she told him, nodding and feeling stronger and more vulnerable at one and the same time, even as she said it. "I'm sure."

**Author's Closing Note: **(warning: if you've already read the conclusion to **Piecekeeping**, then this note will seem strangely familiar…I won't use the word 'redundant' if you don't, mkay?

Oh dear god, what have I done? So many loose ends, so many damaged relationships, so much that needs to be fixed…

Yes, unfortunately this is the end of **Messiah**, as this is the end, more or less, of the Velvet Room shadow epic. This is, however, obviously not the end of the overall story arc, since there are now a million broken pieces and a million broken bonds that have to be put back together. I promise you, I have plotted out and thus intend to fix every single broken thing that I have just destroyed, but I have not decided exactly what story format I am going to use to do that. I feel that the problems I've created here are much more character-driven and intimate, and thus will probably require several short, more focused stories, rather than one giant epic.

If you're interested in seeing how I put the pieces back together, please keep an eye on my page, and check out the stories that I'll begin posting soon. Again, I'm not sure entirely how I'm going to tackle this, but I will tackle it, and relatively quickly, so I hope that you've at least sort of enjoyed the ride so far, and that you're ready, finally, for the next installment in what has become a beloved project of mine.

Thank you very much for reading, it means more to me than I can reasonably express.

And now, if you'll excuse me, after writing the conclusions to both stories in a single Sunday sitting, I am going to pass out. Cheers!


	7. True Love is Blind

**Use Your Imagination**

**Author's Note: **We interrupt your regularly scheduled **Messiah** angstfest to bring you something slightly pithier. Lately, I've gotten a number of comments and PMS about Minako's blindness, and I'd like to answer some questions about how she sees the world and how her blindness works.

Now, all of this comes from my own, albeit limited experience with neurological blindness. This is how it worked for me, but because of the complex nature of the human body and brain, it probably didn't work this way for other people that you may know. I'm not trying to pass this off as "this is what happens when you're blind," but this is the way it happened for me. That's all I got.

I spent some of the time that I was totally blind in a hospital in Southern VA. I still have some very clear visual memories of the time I spent in that hospital. _That is clearly not possible. _The doctors attempted to explain this phenomenon to me, and this is my best effort to explain it, on Minako's behalf, to you.

Oh, and this little story fits somewhere into the timeline of **Messiah**, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure quite where. You can draw your own conclusions.

**Use Your Imagination**

"You look tired," remarked Minako, as she and Tohru sat at the bar at Shiroku pub.

"What? What are you talking about? You don't know what I look like," he said.

"You've been sighing and mumbling to yourself all night," Minako told him. "And you keep yawning. You sound like you look tired."

For some reason, that made Tohru laugh. "What's next?" he asked her. "Are you gonna start hearing colors and smelling sounds? You know, they make some pretty expensive drugs just to help you do that."

Minako ignored him. She was aware that it was a bad idea to try explaining herself to him. Long ago, Minako had learned that people preferred the simple to the complicated. She was blind; therefore, she could not see. Her world must, of course, be devoid of any visual images or stimuli. That was what it meant to be a blind person. Anything else, anything that broke that expected mold would just confuse and alarm people. Confusing things were frightening, and frightened people acted awkwardly around her. Feeling awkward around her would make them start to see her as weird, and creepy, and that would damage all sorts of personal relationships. No, it was much easier to just be the blind person everyone expected to know.

The truth of the matter was, though, that Minako's mind was a beautiful place. It was full of colors, lights, and nostalgic memory globes of dream-pictures that made the passing moments seem more real. She had detailed drawings in her head of every person that she met, and every place that she passed by on the way to work or to Junes or the shopping district.

It was easier, of course, when it was something she'd already seen. She'd never forget what Junpei's face looked like, not after all of the trials and tribulations they'd been through together. When she heard him talk, she could picture just what his face would look like in each of the familiar expressions that it went through during conversation. He grimaced when he was in pain, grinned and puffed himself up when he was proud, and pouted when he was put down. Minako watched him do all of those things in her head when the two of them were talking together.

Tohru Adachi, on the other hand, was a little more difficult. She'd only seen him once, and he didn't even know that she'd ever found out what he really looked like. Now, all she had to go on were the figments of her imagination that came to life when he spoke or moved or laughed, or yawned. She knew what his face basically looked like, and she had an idea of the way he wore his hair and hunched his shoulders, but she wouldn't have known if he lost weight or changed his shoes or anything like that. Still, when he sighed and groaned like he'd been doing all evening, it wasn't hard for Minako to picture a tired look in the eyes that she imagined herself staring into across the bar.

She had seen Shiroku pub a few times before she'd gone blind, so she had a basic idea of what the place looked like. That was the image that made its way through her mind when she walked in. Most of the time, she could only see a few people inside, based on the number of voices that she heard, or rather, didn't hear. Sometimes, though, when the bar was busy, she couldn't see all of the faces of the people due to the imagined crowds that must be packed into the corners. The boy behind the bar (and she knew it was a boy, because she'd heard his voice) had a very distinct look about him. She definitely pictured him in a very particular way, although when she really thought about it, she wasn't able to describe just what his face looked like. There was something about him that her mind recognized, even though she wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the elements of that recognition to anyone else. It didn't' make sense, but it didn't have to. Sometimes, the mind moved in mysterious ways, and that was all right with Minako, who had gotten used to going along for the ride.

"Hey, blind girl." Tohru's voice cut through Minako's distracted reflections. "You still with me? You…sorta zoned out there, for a minute. Is it past your bedtime already?"

Minako watched the teasing, slightly superior look on Tohru's face behind her eyes. "I bet you," she told him, "that I can prove to you, right here and now, that I'm not really blind."

"Uh." Tohru was surprised. "Was…that ever in question? I don't think you've been faking it. You're way too honest to be that good."

Shaking her head, Minako beckoned him closer to her. "No," she insisted, "I mean, I am blind, but I can still see. I'll show you. It's easy. Here, close your eyes."

"What are you going to do?" asked Tohru warily.

Minako frowned impatiently at him. "Just do it, okay?"

She waited a moment, until she finally heard Tohru's long-suffering little sigh of exasperation. "Fine, whatever you say," he said.

"Are your eyes closed?" asked Minako.

"Yeah," muttered Tohru, "they're closed. You're not gonna stick your fingers in them again, are you? Because I really don't-!"

Minako leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. She felt his little jerk of surprise, and then the way he relaxed and leaned eagerly into her lips, one hand braced against her shoulder, the other passing around the back of her neck.

She only let the kiss last a couple of moments before pulling away, leaving him sitting there, breathing just a little bit more rapidly than before.

"So? What did that look like?" she asked him.

"Wha-?" Tohru stammered. He paused for a moment, gave her a nervous little laugh, and then said, "Um, you know what, I don't know. It was too fast. Can I see it again?"

Minako smiled. Sliding off of her stool, she grabbed her coat and began pulling it on, picking up her bag as she prepared to leave.

"Yes," she told him, "you probably can. This time, though, you'll have to use your imagination."

**Judas Kiss**

**Author's Note: **Honestly, I wasn't going to write today, but this piece is inspired, perhaps even prompted a conversation that I had earlier today with **Emd23. **Perhaps it's an exploration of her character, perhaps it's just something that was bothering me and that I needed to get out of my system. It's also a hint as to what's to come in **Messiah**, as we're going to be dealing with the issues of Minako's friendships and how that meshes with her romantic choices very soon in that story…

There were a ton of other beautiful, inspirational things written this morning. I wanted to write some Yosuke x Saki after reading **Miss Hanamura's** new chapter of **Measure Me**, and I wanted some Minako x Shinjiro after reading **der kapitan**'s fantastic new addition to **Twenty-Five Hours**. There is…so much good writing on the main page today…why are you still here reading this?

This story takes place during the timeline of **Messiah **and **Piecekeeping**,but before Minako leaves on her vacation to Iwatodai.

**Judas Kiss**

"It's weird," said Yosuke, as he and Minako sat across from each other at one of the tables in the Junes Food Court. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Minako smiled. "Listen to you," she told him. "You've been spending too much time with Teddie. Usually he's the one spouting the archaic clichés."

She had expected Yosuke to start stammering, or to snap at her like he normally did when anyone remarked on how similar he and Teddie had been growing every since the two of them had started working at Junes together almost two years ago. Instead, though, Yosuke didn't say anything. Minako waited, wondering if he was just trying to come up with the best, most biting comeback, but it was almost as if he hadn't heard her at all.

"Hey, Yosuke?" she asked, after a moment. "Are you listening? What's wrong?"

"What? Oh, it's nothing." She heard Yosuke move uncomfortably around in the plastic chair. It made a squeaky sort of noise as his weight shifted against it. "Sorry, I was just…thinking."

"Thinking?" inquired Minako.

"Yeah…" Yosuke laughed. "I guess even I do that sometimes."

Silence stood between them for a few moments, before Minako spoke up again. "What did you mean," she asked, "when you said that? You know, about things changing, and staying the same. What was that all about?"

"It's just…" Minako could hear the frown in Yosuke's voice. "A lot has happened since I started working here. When we moved here, I thought I was gonna hate this boring job out in the sticks, and at the beginning…well, I did."

"So," asked Minako. "What changed?"

"I, um…I met this girl," muttered Yosuke. "Saki-senpai. Suddenly, it was kind of fun, looking forward to coming to work after school."

Minako had heard that story before, at least once from each of her new Inaba friends. Chie always talked about Yosuke's former crush as though she wished Yosuke had never had to deal with meeting Saki, and then with getting over her. Rise pretty much seemed to agree with her, although Yukiko, who was a little gentler and more sympathetic by nature, never had much to say on the subject.

There was one thing that most of Yosuke's friends agreed on, though. No one, of course, deserved to die in the horrible way that Saki had, but Saki hadn't been worth all of the pining that Yosuke had done after the fact. She hadn't been a very nice girl to begin with, and she hadn't cared at all about Yosuke the way that he'd cared about her. She hadn't been worth the time that he was still spending thinking about her, even if it was a sad and horrible shame about the way she'd had to go.

The only person who seemed to feel differently about things was Yu, who had once told Minako that he'd met Yosuke for the first time only days before Saki's murder. Yosuke, Yu had told her, had been a different guy, then. Sure, he was still a jokester, still always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and being adorably clueless at all the wrong moments, but back then, there had been something more sincere about it. Ever since Saki's death, Yu had said, Yosuke was just a little older, a little less carefree. It had changed him, apparently, and Yu had expressed some regret that he'd never really gotten a chance to know the person that Yosuke had been before Saki.

"It's weird," Yosuke was saying. "I never thought I'd still be here, two years later. I mean, I don't have to keep working here. My dad doesn't really need the help, not with all the high school kids that are trying to make an extra buck. I make plenty of money through my weekend job at the school store. I don't know why I'm spending my break here. Maybe it's because I used to look forward to it so much when she was here. The feeling kinda sticks around, you know?"

Minako did know. "Breakfast," she admitted, "is still my favorite meal of the day…mostly because it's the only one that Shinji and I used to be able to eat together, before I had to leave for work. That doesn't make much sense…it's been a long time since he's been gone. Still, I guess he left me that."

"I don't really know what happened with Shinjiro-san," remarked Yosuke thoughtfully. "But, don't worry, I'm not gonna ask…I know it's none of my business, but…it had something to do with Adachi, right? I mean, with him running around loose, and Dojima-san keeping you late at work every night to deal with it…that was part of it, wasn't it?"

Minako was very glad, for a moment, that she couldn't meet his eyes. "Yes," she said, and it came out much more squeakily than she'd intended. He was…definitely a factor."

Yosuke muttered something unintelligible to himself, under his breath. "I thought so," he told her eventually. "I knew it was something like that. Damnit, that guy has taken so much away from everyone. First he ruined Namatame's life, then mine, and then yours. And you know what the worst part is? He got away with it. They're all dead…Miss Yamano, Saki-senpai…"

"Shinjiro's not dead," interrupted Minako, perhaps a bit too sharply. Maybe it was because Shinjiro had, for all intents and purposes, been dead once that she was so eager not to hear Yosuke refer to him that way unnecessarily.

"Oh, right, sure," said Yosuke, correcting himself hastily. "Yeah, I know, and that's good, but…but that thing you had together, that's dead, right?"

That sent another stab of pain through Minako's chest. Yes, she thought, that was true. No matter how many times she tried to tell herself that they still had a chance, Yosuke was right. She'd killed the thing that she and Shinjiro were trying to create when she'd made all the worst choices during the previous summer. She'd killed it just as dead as Tohru had killed that poor Saki girl. It was just as unlikely to ever come back as those horribly hung women. Could love, wondered Minako, really die? When people died, what happened to them? Did they go to some afterlife, or someplace beyond mortal reach? So, then, what happened to a dead love? Would she find it again, someday, after she'd left everything behind?

"But somehow," Yosuke was mumbling, more and more angrily as he got farther into his argument. "Somehow, that guy is still alive. After everything he's taken away from us, what did we do? We gave him another chance at life. We didn't turn him in when we could have. We just…we just let it all go. We let Saki go, we let Shinjiro go…"

As the words tumbled out of Yosuke's mouth, Minako felt herself sinking a little farther down into her chair with every vitriolic line he spat. She had to force herself to remember that, although she couldn't see him, he could see her, and she probably shouldn't give him any reason to be suspicious. For the longest time since the incident with the snake shadow, Yosuke hadn't said anything about Tohru. She hadn't brought it up, and had, at least in the last week or so, been hoping that maybe, just maybe, Yosuke had started moving past the things that had happened. She had almost been ready to tell him the truth about what had happened to end her relationship with Shinjiro, and what had, she now had to admit to herself, been happening very recently, if reluctantly and against her better judgment, between her and Tohru in the Velvet Room.

"It makes me feel like I let them all down," Yosuke continued. She could picture the defeated look on his face, the slump of his shoulders, just the way he'd looked when she'd been trying to cheer him up and talk him into believing that she really would and could help him save his partner, back when this mess had all begun. "It makes me feel like this is my fault, somehow. What kind of a friend just lets stuff like that go? I can't just move on like this. It wouldn't be right. Hell, it makes me feel like Judas. When I think that I had the chance to finally get vengeance for their deaths, and I just…I just did nothing. I just sat there and hated him and did nothing! What the hell…"

"He saved our lives," Minako reminded Yosuke meekly.

Yosuke snorted with derision. "_You_ saved our lives," he reminded her. "It's not like he was going to come on his own. You forced him in there in the first place, right? He didn't have a choice, he was your prisoner. He had to defend himself, that's what got us all out of there alive. You were the one that made the decision. Oh, and Nanako, Nanako helped a lot. But if it had been up to him, and if he hadn't had to beat those shadows to save his own neck, he'd have watched us all get mutilated by that thing. He'd have laughed. Hell, it would have been fun for him. That's just the kind of piece of shit he is."

So, thought Minako, that was how Yosuke had been justifying this to himself. If that was how he felt about it, if he really considered that he'd betrayed Saki just by letting another human being live, then what on earth did that make Minako? She hadn't just let him live, she'd…she'd taken him back into her life. She knew her face was flushing hotly when she thought about the night she'd let him walk her home, and had invited him, no, almost insisted that he come in and spend the night with her. He'd been ready to leave, and she could have let him. No, she'd asked him to stay. She'd kissed him and brought down his guard. Minako couldn't pretend, anymore, that being with Tohru was something that had happened by accident, or by the perverse whims of the shadows. It was on her head, now. She'd wanted it, and she'd done it…and that was far worse than any betrayal Yosuke had committed just by staying silent about Tohru's existence in the Velvet Room. She'd known what she was doing, this time. She'd just decided that she didn't care. It had been easier not to care about it when there had been no one else there to condemn her. Now, it was a different story. Now, she felt like dirt.

But, said the little voice in the back of Minako's mind, it wasn't about Yosuke. She knew that she hadn't done any of these things because she wanted to hurt him, or because he wasn't important to her. She'd done what she'd done because of something totally different, because there was another person out there who was, in a strange, twisted, ill-advised way, becoming important to her. Did caring about one person really make caring about another person wrong, just because those two people had hurt each other? Did that mean that Minako was forced to hurt one of them? In the end, wouldn't that only prolong the cycle, and deepen the damage?

"I thought I loved her," mumbled Yosuke.

"What?" The word 'love' snapped Minako back out of her self-deprecating reverie.

"Saki-senpai," Yosuke clarified. "I…I thought I loved her. I mean, who knows, love's a…a really big deal, and maybe I've never…but I thought I did. I guess I didn't, after all. I guess that's what all this means; I guess I couldn't have loved her if I'm willing to just let her killer walk away. That's not what love is. At least I think I know that much."

"It's possible," murmured Minako, "to love someone even if you can't hate their enemies."

Yosuke's hand smacked down so hard on the table that Minako sat up straighter in surprise.

"No," he told her. "It's not."

**Insomaniacal**

**Author's Note: **This came from another writing exercise. I'm attempting a forty-minute free writing session before passing out for my obligatory pre-rehearsal power nap. Lately, I haven't been getting more than three hours of sleep a night…and thus, this story.

As is most of the stuff I write, possibly because I am too lazy (or exhausted) to be original, this piece is also a companion story to **Messiah**, and falls into the same arc as that story does. If you're looking at the timeline, this comes right after the big emotional scene on the evening of December 18.

**Insomaniacal**

Tohru Adachi couldn't sleep. Honestly. It wasn't possible. No matter how hard he tried, or what a long day he'd had, or how bored and tired he'd become, sleep just wasn't an option. Apparently, residents of the Velvet Room just weren't hard-wired for sleep. Time didn't really pass in there, so why bother wasting any of it? Sleep was something that made up for all the hours of the day you spent wishing you weren't awake. No passing of the hours meant no daytime, no nighttime, no mercy. He was always, agonizingly awake.

The funny part was, this wasn't really a new thing for him. Oh, of course, before he'd ended up trapped in the Velvet Room, he'd slept. It just wasn't very often, or very well, and never more than a few hours a night, if that. His sleep was sporadic, easily interrupted, always full of uncomfortable half-waking dreams that combined reality with fantasy in a very disturbing way.

Ever since he'd been a kid, Adachi had struggled to sleep. He'd been that little boy who'd come running out of his bedroom at two AM, begging for a glass of water just so that he could stay awake for a few more minutes. In high school, he'd snuck out to the clubs with his friends, and always been the last one to admit to being ready to go home. In college, he'd pulled all-nighters with the best of them, one grueling night after another.

At first, he'd figured he didn't need it. For some reason, his body was just rigged to operate differently. He could get things done when other people couldn't, could pull longer hours and use his nights for all sorts of things while other people were wasting them , snoring away. That had served him well at the beginning, when he'd first started out on the police force. He'd figured that special talent of his was going to help him get a long way. Instead, all it got him was an endless string of monotonous night shifts that never amounted to anything he could write home about.

Then, slowly, he'd begun to realize that even if he didn't need sleep, he wanted t. He craved it. There was a reason that people were always saying that a healthy, full-grown adult needed at least eight hours of sleep a night. No one was supposed to be conscious and functioning hour, after hour, after hour like him. His brain was always on, always working. There was no rest, no respite, and he couldn't get away from the things that had begun to plague him or perseverate in the darker recesses of his mind. He wanted to turn it off, to relax, to slow down, but that never happened. He was constantly focused, constantly in touch with world around him. It started to waste him.

Other people, when they were miserable, or angry would go off and try to "sleep it off," knowing that they'd "probably feel better in the morning." Adachi didn't. He'd just lie there and brood over the injustice of whatever it was, wishing he could close his eyes for a few minutes and just shut all of it out. All of the people, all of the shit, all of the things that nobody thought he was paying attention to, all of the lies that they told. He wanted to forget about it and get away from it, but nothing ever worked. There was nowhere to hide from the constant, sickening consciousness.

After years and years of that, lying awake in his chair in the Velvet Room felt like nothing new. The only difference was that this time, he needed a moment to recharge. After the events of the night before, there were so many feelings racing break-neck through his head at the same time that he could barely breathe from trying to feel them all at once. Some of them were brand new, totally unfamiliar, and deeply unwelcome. If he could only turn it all off for just a few hours, maybe he'd have enough time to make some sense out of himself, and find his way back from the bottom of whatever he'd fallen into.

Maybe it was true, he thought, what those obnoxious sleep-study scientists said, on all those time-wasting infomercials.

Maybe insomnia really could drive you insane.

**Playtime**

**Author's Note: **I'm not supposed to be touching my Adachi x Minako stories until Friday at midnight…I made that promise to myself to ensure that I get all of my work done before I get engrossed and obsessed with that story again.

Still, I was surfing around on **Yuruya-sama**'s Deviantart last night, and I came across some amazingly wonderful Adachi x Minako pictures that she drew, and…well, I couldn't help myself. I had to stop what I was doing and write something. Now, though, seriously, no more of this pairing until Friday, and I mean it this time!

I wrote this after listening to a very interesting presentation in my Preschool Policy class, about some research that was done on the percentage of criminals and murderers who were not played with sufficiently as children. I mean, I confess, I didn't believe it was anything more than a cliché at first, but the literature and the research does show that murderers and criminals suffer from a lack of sufficient childhood playtime…and from that concept came this story.

Now, I REALLY have to get back to my exams…egods. I hope you enjoy. Thanks to you all for being so inspiring!

This story falls probably a long time after the events of **Messiah**, and is unexpectedly fluffy…don't expect too much fluff from the next few chapters of **Messiah.**

**Playtime**

"Hey, listen," said Tohru Adachi, forcing himself painfully out of the tiny TV that Minako kept in her living room. "We really have to talk about you getting a bigger monitor…I mean, I don't think I can lose any more weight, and my leg's starting to get this kinda cramp, and…wait, what the hell are you doing?"

Minako was sitting cross-legged on the ground, already wearing those pajamas that didn't fit her quite right; the ones that she'd borrowed from that friend of hers…Yukari, maybe, or something like that. She was frowning intently down at a flat piece of cardboard and a set of little letter tiles that were lying in a heap at her feet.

"Uh," remarked Adachi.

"It's Scrabble," Minako informed him, without looking up. "It's a word game. I'm trying to practice using my eyes again, and I thought that this might be a good way to start. See, I have to use all of the letters to put words together, and in order to put the words together, I have to be able to find all of the available combinations, so that what I really need to focus on is-!"

"Right. Okay." Settling down next to her, Adachi yawned. "You want me to come back later? Not like I've got anything else to do, but if You, Yourself, and You are having some kind of juvenile slumber party, then hey, don't let me interrupt."

Minako flicked a letter tile over to him, and it clattered to a halt just in front of his right hand.

"It's not juvenile," she informed him. "I told you, its practice." Suddenly, a smile started to spread out from the corners of her lips, and she turned on him with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, the one that always managed to piss Adachi off and turn him on at the same time. "You think you're pretty smart, don't you?"

"Am I supposed to answer that?" he asked. "I mean…I'm pretty much screwed either way, right? If I say yes, I'm an egotist, and if I say no, I'm an idiot, so…"

"So," finished Minako, "You try, then. See if you can make a word out of this."

Adachi rolled his eyes. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," agreed Minako. "Come on, it won't kill you. I thought you liked showing off. Besides, if you beat me I'll put the game away."

Adachi grinned at her. "And then what?"

"And then," Minako retorted, "I'll be open to suggestions. So, are you in or out?"

Letting out a long suffering sigh, Adachi sprawled out on the ground next to Minako's goddamn game. "Fine, try me," he said, not trying too hard to mask the boredom in his voice. "What have we got here, uh….CPLUTER."

"Puter," said Minako. "If only we had a C and an O…oh, and an M, I suppose…"

"Curt," announced Adachi, reaching out and moving a few tiles around until he'd formed the word he wanted. "There. What else you got?"

Minako wrinkled her nose at him. "Isn't that spelled with a K?"

"It is not," Adachi informed her. "Jeez, sometimes I forget you never went to college. Good thing you're nice to look at."

Minako glared at him, planting her hands on her hips as her eyes flashed dangerously in his direction. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she demanded.

Adachi tried not to notice how goddamn gorgeous she was when she got angry.

"Means exactly what I said," he told her, reaching into the pile of tiles for a new set, partly so that she wouldn't see the look on his face. "Come on, give me another one. Let's get this over with."

"No," insisted Minako. "It's my turn this time. Here." She reached into his hand and pulled out several tiles, laying them out in front of her on the floor.

"JKOOREB," read Adachi with a yawn.

"I'm supposed to read them," Minako reminded him. "I'm the one re-learning how to see, remember?"

"By all means, please," drawled Adachi. "Read the damn tiles, be my guest."

Minako frowned down at them, her finger hovering over each one as she tried to parse them in her mind and with her eyes. Adachi caught himself smiling as he watched her thinking, forcing herself through what had to be a complicated step by step of remembering all over again what it was like to connect images with thoughts and thoughts with images.

"Are you sure you don't want me to-?" he began.

"Shut up," snapped Minako. "Here, I've got it." She selected a few tiles and laid them out on the floor in front of them.

"J-E-R-K," she said triumphantly.

Adachi snorted out a laugh. "Nice," he said. "That's cute. Anyone ever told you that you've got a knack for that whole 'tact' thing?"

"Your turn," muttered Minako, raising an eyebrow at him.

Adachi shrugged. Reaching into the pile, he pulled out a selection of tiles at random, and dumped them on the floor at Minako's feet. Miraculously, they all landed face-up and he began reading them off to her while trying to sort them out in his head at the same time.

"L," he said. "VBTXOE."

"Uh oh," said Minako. "An X. I bet you can't make anything out of that."

Adachi, however, had already found a way to make a word with the tiles he had. The trouble was, it wasn't necessarily a word he wanted to use. Frustrated, he scanned the tiles a few more times, hoping that there might be something else in there that he hadn't seen the first time around. Unfortunately, there wasn't.

"What, can't find anything?" asked Minako.

Adachi bit his lip. Reaching for the tiles, he laid out L-O-V-E at Minako's feet, and then glared down at the word while Minako spent a few moments poring over and it forcing her eyes to practice reading.

"Oh!" she said in surprise.

Adachi sighed. "Well? It counts, doesn't it?"

For some reason, Minako wasn't looking at him. "Of course it counts," she murmured. "It's just that, uh…" She stammered to a stop, apparently too flustered to get the rest of whatever it was off of her mind.

Adachi had a feeling he knew what the trouble was, and he was all too eager to assuage her fears on the subject. "Hey, I'm not gonna make you read it out loud," he assured her. "I mean, I know you can read it, right? If you say you can, I believe you, and that's the point of this whole game, so…"

"Yes," agreed Minako, sounding relieved. "Exactly."

At the same moment, Adachi and Minako both reached out to brush the tiles away, and then recoiled from each other as their fingers met in the middle and came into electric contact.

"Um," mumbled Adachi.

**The Hunger**

**Author's Note: **Again with the forty minute free-write thing. I ran out of food money for the week as of yesterday, due to some unfortunate emergency expenditures. It's only Sunday, I've got a whole week ahead of me, and all there is in my house is half a box of life cereal.

As usual when I'm feeling slightly less than my usual peppy self, I'm going to free-write some Adachi. His arcana seems particularly appropriate for my mood at the moment…

And as usual, this story falls during the timeline of my persona series, although I'm not sure where, and you are welcome to decide that for yourself. It's probably somewhere during **Messiah.**

**The Hunger**

Adachi's stomach growled. The sound stood out and echoed noisily around the Velvet Room. Igor, as usual, gave Adachi a disapproving look, as though the sound had disturbed whatever kind of inner peace that guy was always trying so goddamn hard to demonstrate. Adachi just shrugged. It didn't happen that often. He never even got hungry in the Velvet Room, except when he'd just come back in from some contact with the outside world. The outside world still saw him, sort of, as a human being…or at least, as human enough to need the basic staples, like food and sleep. Maybe Igor didn't need them, but Adachi did…sometimes. He held on to those needs with a covetous vengeance. They were, in many ways, his last legitimate connection to the real life that he wished he was still living.

Before he'd started rising up in the ranks of the police force, and long before he'd transferred to Inaba to be Dojima-san's gopher, Adachi had learned what it was like to be really hungry. Like most kids just out of college, he'd insisted on breaking away from his parents, and had refused all their attempts to throw their money at him, in what had, at the time, been something like the attitude of the noble ascetic. Maybe it had been stupid…okay, he corrected himself, it had definitely been stupid, but it had been his first chance to grasp for his own independence, and most kids did pretty much the same idiotic thing when given the opportunity. At any rate, he'd starved himself for the sake of being a grown man, and he'd spent plenty of nights listening to the angry grumblings of his insides as they complained to him about the food he hadn't been able to afford to eat that day.

The strange thing was that, at the time, Adachi hadn't minded the hunger. He'd almost liked it. That twisted feeling that his guts got when he started starving them to death was sort of a mark of pride for him, a little physical twinge that reminded him that he was strong enough to go without, even if it hurt a little bit. It was adversity, and he was facing it. That was what a real man was supposed to do, right? It gave him a chance to show himself that when times got tough, he could get tougher.

He remembered what that felt like, later in life, especially when he started living in Inaba. Sometimes, when he came home after a long day of being ordered around and shouted at by the man who was supposedly his "partner," he would sit in his living room all night and watch TV without eating any dinner. Partially, it was because he couldn't cook, and was too lazy most evenings to order out. There was another reason, too, though. Sometimes, he did it just because he liked to remind himself that he could, that there was power that came from the ability to deprive himself. There were lots of things that he wanted, that he knew he couldn't have. He wanted a better position, a better paycheck, and the respect of his peers at work, especially of Dojima, although he'd never, ever admit that to anyone out loud. He wanted the women who scowled at him and wouldn't even meet his eyes when he checked them out on the street. There were other things too, that he desperately wished he didn't want; things like the kind of family that Dojima-san and that Narukami kid came home to at night. Those things were all out of his reach, and he knew it was a waste of time to try and aim for them, especially after the murders began, and he gave himself up to the knowledge that he wasn't the man that part of him wished he could have been in another life.

What he did have, though, was the hunger. They couldn't starve him of what he wanted, because he was more than able to starve himself, and to feel the pain without suffering for it, or letting it bring him down. He could overcome the hunger, could dominate it, just the same way that he could overcome the rest of the shit that life threw at him, and the things that he wasn't supposed to want.

At least, he thought, that was how it had felt before. Now, trapped in the Velvet Room, without anything left to strive for or prove to anyone, he was sick of the hunger, and of forcing himself to go without. It wasn't even his choice anymore. He hadn't had a choice of his own in a long time, and there was so little under his control that he had almost forgotten about why he'd bothered in the first place to try to control the stomach pangs.

Now, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that what he wanted most in this whole sick crap-laden world was a sandwich. Preferably without mayonnaise….but he would have been willing to compromise on that part.

**Brushstrokes**

**Author's Note: **Another forty minute free-write, this time inspired by the wonderful and talented **Yuruya-sama**, who did some amazing artwork for my stories on Deviantart! Please do go check out her gallery, you won't be disappointed. It's worth it!

I suppose this one takes place during the Christmas Day moments in **Messiah.** I guess we can call it a deleted scene. Idea taken from the moment in Adachi's social link, when he draws Nanako the flower.

**Brushstrokes**

Empty Chinese food cartons lay abandoned on the table, while the ending credits of the movie rolled. Tohru was still lounging on the sofa, with one arm draped lazily over Minako's shoulders, while she tore into one of the envelopes she'd received in yesterday's mail.

"What are you doing?" Tohru asked, snatching the envelope out of Minako's fingers. She listened to the little, crackling, papery sound of him deftly slitting it open. "You're gonna break whatever's in there if you tear at it like that. Here." He handed it back to her. "So? What did you get? A check from the family?"

"I don't have a family," Minako reminded him. "It's from Mitsuru…" Taking his hand, she guided his fingers across to the little raised "K" mark on the bottom of the envelope, the mark that let her know that the letter came on the stationary of the Kirijo Group. "It's probably the yearly Christmas card. She sent me one last year, even though we spent most of the holiday in the same room. She really believes in the little formalities."

"Yikes," muttered Tohru. "She sounds…uh…like my mother, actually. Do me a favor and don't introduce us."

Minako laughed. "Don't worry," she assured him sincerely, "I won't." There wasn't much chance, she thought, of her introducing Tohru to any of her SEES friends, other than Junpei, if she could possibly help it.

She sighed, as she fingered the envelope, reluctant to pull out the card, even though she knew that Mitsuru would, very thoughtfully, have given her something tactile that she could understand, even without the use of her eyes. "She's not going to be very happy with me," murmured Minako ruefully. "This is the second year in a row that I've been alive, fully conscious, and yet haven't sent out a single Christmas card."

"You don't like them?" asked Tohru. "Yeah, I can understand that. I don't like them either, much…it's such a hassle, having to find the right way to suck up to every single person on your list…even the ones you haven't seen in years, don't remember, or don't even like. If you're really unlucky, people will write you thank you notes…" He groaned. "What a drag. Like they really care about anything more than making sure you send a better check next year…"

"No," said Minako, shaking her head. "It's not that. I don't mind sending them, I just…I never know exactly what to send. Other people have photographs, but I…I don't really have anything they'd want to see."

"Huh." Tohru apparently had to think about that for a moment. "Hell, you could just draw a Christmas tree or something. Lots of people half-ass it, like that."

"But," insisted Minako, "I can't draw. I mean…even before the Seal, I couldn't draw. I'm hopeless at it. I can't even make a good stick figure!"

"And now," muttered Tohru thoughtfully, "you're probably even shittier at it…yeah, okay." She heard the frown in his voice, before she felt him sit up a little straighter and shift against her on the sofa. "Hey, you got a pencil?"

Minako thought that she probably did. "Why?" she asked, as she stood up and crossed over to the kitchen, to rummage around in the drawers for some kind of writing implement. "Um, will a pen do? Actually…how about a crayon?"

Tohru laughed. "Again with the kid stuff," he said. "Yeah, bring the crayon, I guess."

Minako retrieved the crayon, and carried it back over to the sofa with her, holding it out in Tohru's direction. He took it from her, paused for a moment, and then snorted out a laugh.

"You know this is pink, right?" he asked her.

"No," admitted Minako. "I had no idea."

"You're really taxing my artist's skills, here, blind girl," murmured Tohru. "Here, give me that envelope."

She passed it over to him, and listened for a few minutes as the crayon slid and scratched its way across the envelope paper. "Um…" he said after a moment. Minako smiled. She could hear the way his voice muffled ever so slightly every time he tapped the crayon against his moving lips. "Well, okay, it's pink, but…here, it's a Christmas tree."

He thrust the envelope at her, and she accepted it.

"Thank you," she said politely. "But…um…Tohru? I can't see it."

"Oh, right, sure." He sounded a little embarrassed. "Yeah, that's kinda the point, isn't it? Heh. Uh…."

Suddenly, he moved a little closer to her across the cushions. Instead of putting his arm around her again, he touched his fingertips to the bare place on her shoulder, where her sweater had slipped off during the movie.

"What are you-?" she began.

She stopped, as his fingers began to trace gently but deftly along her skin, first up, then out, then down, ad back across the arm again. It tickled, and tingled a bit, and she felt a little shiver run across her shoulders.

"Hold still," commanded Tohru. "I'm drawing you a Christmas tree. You know, one that you can see."

Minako smiled, and closed her eyes, letting the tree begin to take shape in her mind as she felt the brushstrokes of his fingers playing across his makeshift canvass.

"Oh, now I see it," she told him. "You never told me that you were an artist."

There was just a hint of pride in Tohru's voice, as he mumbled, "Yeah, well…you never asked. Maybe it's one of my hidden talents…"


	8. Piecekeeping

**Prologue - December 16**

**Author's Note: **Welcome back to Inaba, for round three! Wow, really, round three already? I hope you are all having as much fun with this as I am! That might be hard, though…as I am having a really good time.

Sorry it took so long for me to update this chapter. I'm not sure exactly why, but for some reason I was struggling with the dialogue. Hopefully that's all sorted now.  
Remember, this is a direct sequel to **Bondswoman**, so if you haven't read that, you may want to go back and do so before tackling this one. It won't make a lot of sense without the first two stories

There's also a spin-off to this story, **Messiah**, which features Adachi x Minako, the trainwreck pairing introduced in **Bondswoman**, which even I can't figure out why I hate to love and love to hate. If you're interested, go ahead and check it out, but if that's not your thing, then please don't. There will be plenty for you to read right here without having to force yourself through that story.

Okay, enough talk. Here we go again!

**Prologue – December 16**

It was snowing, although even Nanako had to admit that the snow was disappointing. It wasn't beautiful, light, fluffy snow that fell to the ground and turned into a pretty white blanket. Instead, it was big, lumpy, slushy snow that made a weird little "thud" noise when it hit, and almost immediately melted away. For the first snow of the year, this was a little bit of a letdown.

Nanako was waiting in the food court when Kanji, Rise, Naoto and Teddie came out of the electronics department together, looking tired, but triumphant.

"Today's patrol is complete, Nanako-chan," announced Naoto, pulling up a chair at Nanako's table. "All shadows have been accounted for and eliminated. There is no immediate danger."

"Yeah," said Kanji. "We did have to take out this crazy squid shadow thing, though."

Rise shook her head. "That's the third time this month!" she reminded them. "What's with the squids? Naoto, what do squids mean? Do they stand for something, or…?"

Naoto, for once, seemed a little bit out of her depth. ""Honestly," she admitted, "I…I have no idea."

For the last six months, ever since Yu had gone back to his parents' house, and Yosuke, Chie, and Yukiko had left for college, Nanako and the others had been taking turns going on patrols inside the Velvet Room, checking their friends' minds for shadows, and defeating any shadows they found. So far, they'd been successful in keeping both minds free of any sort of real trouble, which Nanako hoped was helping her Big Bro enjoy his last year of high school. Minako, whom Nanako saw almost every day, was already definitely feeling better because of it, and that gave Nanako a little bit more confidence that she was finally and truly making a difference for her Big Bro after all.

"Hey," asked Kanji. "What time is it? The train's coming at noon, right?"

"According to the timetables we located," confirmed Naoto, "they are due to arrive just after twelve o'clock. As it is almost eleven thirty five now, we still have some time before we will need to head over to the station."

"Yeah, well, I don't wanna be late," grumbled Kanji. "How much would that suck, them coming back home after six months away, only to get here and realize that nobody showed p to meet them?"

Rise patted Kanji comforting on his muscular shoulder. "We'll be there," she assured him. "Relax."

"Hey," asked Teddie suddenly, glancing around the food court. "Where's Mina-chan? Wasn't she supposed to come with us to meet Sensei?"

Nanako bit her lip. "Um," she said, "I don't know!" That wasn't exactly a lie, she told herself. After all, she really didn't know where Minako was. It was just that she knew more about who Minako had been with than any of the others. Still, that wasn't what Teddie had asked, was it? Somehow, she felt like it was probably better to keep this one a secret, just for now. Minako would probably be happier if she did.

"Well," began Kanji, "we're not gonna wait for-!"

"Hey! Guys!" As if on cue, Minako came rushing into the food court, stumbling and blinking, looking exhausted. Her hair was inexplicable hanging around her shoulders, something that Nanako had never seen before. Actually, thought Nanako, before she could stop herself, Minako's hair looked terrible. It was matted, wet, and sticky, covered in snow and clearly un-brushed.

"Um," mumbled Nanako, "are…you okay?"

Minako glanced over in Nanako's direction with a sightless look that said, very clearly, "We will talk about this later." Nanako swallowed uncomfortably.

"Am I too late?" asked Minako breathlessly. "I didn't miss them, did I?"

"Whoa, relax!" insisted Rise. "You've got plenty of time! We were just talking about going over to meet them at the station." Frowning, she added, "but, before we do, I think we need to clean you up a little bit. Come on, I've got a comb and a brush in my bag, and some makeup might not be a bad idea for those dark circles…"

While Rise and Minako went off together, talking in hushed voices, Kanji ad Teddie exchanged a puzzled look.

"Huh?" asked Kanji.

Teddie shook his head, sparkling all over as he remarked sagely, "Girls…always such a magical, uncharted mystery…"

Naoto did not look impressed with either of them. "Minako-chan was probably just working late," she said quietly. "And I sure she would appreciate it if you did not stare just because she seems to be having a bad hair day."

Eventually, all six of them did walk over to the train station, making it just in time to see the arrival of the twelve o'clock train from the city. Nanako carefully scanned each of the faces as the train doors opened, looking for the familiar smiles of any of her friends, but for one beloved face in particular.

"Nanako-chan!" shouted Yosuke's voice from somewhere at the front of the train. "Kanji! Minako! Hey, over here, guys!"

Nanako followed the sound of his voice, and beamed to see him standing on the platform, waving enthusiastically while Chie and Yukiko pulled what looked like a pair of very heavy suitcases out of a nearby train car. Sitting in his chair in front of them, with a backpack lying on his lap, was Yu Narukami, the one person who Nanako had wanted to see for weeks more than anyone else in the entire world.

"Big Bro!" she shrieked, rushing forward and throwing herself into his arms. The backpack, temporarily displaced by her enthusiasm, fell to the floor and lay there while Yu gave Nanako a big, warm, friendly hug.

"Hey, Chie-senpai…long time no see!" said Kanji, slapping Chie on the back and making her wince.

"Yuki-chan! You're back!" Teddie sparkled winningly at her, although Nanako noticed that he pointedly did not offer to help with her luggage.

Smiles, greetings, and embraces were exchanged all around. Nanako watched as Yosuke and Minako chatted warmly to each other, while Rise began prattling excitedly to Yukiko and Chie, trying to give them the fastest-ever resume of all of the things that had happened in her life since they'd left for college six months before.

"It's snowing," Nanako told Yu. "The snow's not very good, though. I don't think we can make a snowman today."

Yu squeezed her shoulder with one comforting hand. "Don't worry," he promised, "There will be other snow days. I'm not leaving for two weeks, so we'll have plenty of time to play together."

Nanako liked the sound of that. "I'm stronger now," she assured him. "I can help more with packing the snow, and making the body. Next year, I'll be able to do it all by myself! Um…but I'd rather do it with you," she added quickly. "It's much more fun when you're here."

"Yosuke-senpai," inquired Naoto. "How do you like college? Is the academic environment to your liking, there? Have you chosen a course of study?"

Yosuke stared at her for a moment. "Uh, honestly," he replied, "I'm still just trying to figure out how to get all of my work in on time and what a 'citation' is. I don't have to pick a major until next year, so why worry about it now?"

"How about the girls?" asked Yu, with just a hint of malice in his teasing tone. "I hear college girls are all really something. What do you think, Yosuke?"

That, apparently, was a question that Yosuke was much more prepared to answer. "Dude," he told Yu, "you have no idea. College is like, a totally different world from Inaba. There are girls everywhere, and you would never believe who's in the class above mine. I swear, it has to be fate."

Even Nanako leaned in to hear the end of the story, before it was interrupted by the untimely and alarmingly loud growl of Chie's stomach.

"Uh…sorry," she mumbled. "It was just a really long train ride, and I haven't eaten since breakfast…"

Groaning and laughing, the whole group gathered up bags and suitcases, and somehow managed to cart everything back to the food court, where they all sat down around the table together and began ordering.

"I have been looking forward to a nice juicy piece of steak for so long!" Chie was grinning all over her face. "I've been daydreaming about it all day…"

"Yes," agreed Yukiko thoughtfully. "It's strange how much you miss the little things that you never realized were important before."

Yosuke snorted. "Steak isn't a 'little thing' for Chie," he reminded Yukiko. "It's kind of her reason for living. The cafeteria at school doesn't have too much that anyone would really want to eat, so I can't say that I really blame her this time."

Nanako could see out of the corner of her eye that Minako wasn't eating anything. Instead, she had her eyes closed and was rubbing at her head with one hand.

"Minako?" asked Nanako hesitantly. "Um, does your head hurt?"

Instantly, every single pair of eyes at the table was focused on Minako's face. Apparently aware of all the sudden attention, Minako shook her head emphatically. "It's nothing," she promised. "It's just a stress headache, not a shadow. I promise. Honestly, I'm fine." After a moment, she added, "Yu, how are you feeling? You haven't been struggling with headaches at home, have you?"

"No, I haven't," Yu said. "Nanako says that's because you've all been working extra hard to clear out the place around our mind doors, though. I…really need to thank you for that. You're the best friends a guy could have. I mean it."

Each person mumbled their own little embarrassed response.

"I am certain you would do the same for us," murmured Naoto. "It is our pleasure to be of some help, at any rate."

For some reason, that only made Yu frown. "I wish it wasn't necessary," he told her. "You shouldn't have to spend so much of your time looking out for me."

"For us," Minako corrected him. "Remember, this isn't all your fault. I'm equally guilty."

Nanako didn't' understand what either of them was talking about. What did they mean "equally guilty?" It wasn't as though this was something they'd done on purpose, or that they were forcing anyone to do. They hadn't put the shadows inside their heads, just to make trouble for everyone else.  
"Nobody's guilty of anything," she insisted, and it came out a little more forcefully than she'd expected. "Um…you shouldn't blame yourselves for things that aren't your fault. Dad is always telling me 'you have to accept responsibility for your actions,' but, these aren't your actions, they're shadows, so…so it's different."

Nobody said anything for a moment, and Nanako realized that she was now the center of all the attention. Flushing a bit, she fidgeted with her menu.

"Nanako's right, you know," said Yosuke, taking it upon himself to save the moment, much to Nanako's relief. "Hey, I've got an idea. Before we go over to Yu and Nanako's place after lunch, let's check out the Velvet Room together. We can all say hi to Igor, and have a look around. I know you guys have already been in there today," he said, as Kanji opened his mouth to protest, "but now that we're all back home again, this is probably the best time for us to start working on a solution."

"A solution?" asked Rise.

Yosuke nodded. "Yeah," he repeated, "a solution to the Velvet Room problem. I mean, this can't really go on forever, right? We've all got lives to live, and what if one day something happens, and we forget to check the Velvet Room, or don't make it in time? Nah, enough is enough. We're going to have to put a stop this thing once and for all."

"But, senpai," began Naoto hesitantly. "We have no reason to believe that such a thing is even possible. Those are brave words, of course, but how can we be sure that there is a solution?"

Shrugging, Yosuke admitted, "Okay, we can't be sure, but…I'm not willing to admit that there isn't, not yet. Are you?"

Everyone at the table began shaking their heads.

"So, uh, does this mean that we're starting up the 'investigation team' again?" asked Kanji.

Yosuke grinned. "Of course!" he told them. "I mean, it's not like we ever dissolved it in the first place, right?"

Yu nodded slowly, and then reached over and gave Yosuke a friendly clap on the shoulder. "Okay," he said. "Then I'll leave this in your capable hands, leader."

As the others spoke up, each adding their own encouraging words, Yosuke looked slightly stunned.

"Hey," he said to Yu, "look, it's not like you won't always be our-!"

Yu was already shaking his head. "It's okay," he said reassuringly. "I don't mind."

**One - December 16**

**Author's Note: **Hey guys! Sorry for the slow updates today. This weekend's gonna be a busy one for me, so I'll see you again on Sunday night. Until then, I hope the updates on both **Piecekeeping** and**Messiah** can tide you over.

Oh, and I am terribly excited, because **Supernova23** was awesome enough o let me work on a story with him! It's called **Crosses to Bear**, and it's about the healers in the persona games! Please do go check it out if you have the time, we'd both love to hear from you about it! You should read some of the stories on his page while you're at it, he's got a magnificent literary voice.

Oh, and don't let what Igor says in this chapter freak you out too much. Remember, it's only chapter one. If I gave you the solution now, there wouldn't be much of a story to tell!

Not yet, anyway.

The second half of this chapter is for those of you who are in college. Oh, how I miss those wonderful days…

**One – December 16**

Yosuke felt strange as he accompanied the other members of the team through the electronics department and into the TV. The word "leader" was echoing around uncomfortably inside his head, and there was a strange, lumpy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Of course, he'd always known that he was serving as the temporary leader, as Yu's right hand man, holding down the fort while Yu was out of commission. Something about hearing Yu say it out loud, however, had turned this into something that sounded sickeningly permanent. He wasn't just taking hits for his partner anymore. Now, he was the "leader." What did that mean? Did that mean that they were giving up? Were they never going to get Yu back?

"Hey, Yosuke?" asked Chie, sounding worried. "You…don't look so good. Everything okay? Did you eat something bad?"

Yosuke shook his head distractedly. "No, I'm fine," he assured her. "Just…forget about it."

Igor was waiting for them in the velvet Room, and next to him in the assistant's chair was Adachi, looking bored and distracted. For some reason, as soon as they walked in, Adachi glanced up and looked around at each of their faces, as though trying to find someone in particular.

"Oh, yeah," he muttered after a moment, apparently losing interest and falling back into a dejected, listless slump. "Right, of course she wouldn't be with you."

"Welcome," murmured Igor, "to the Velvet Room." Was it Yosuke's imagination, or did Igor look just a bit more tired and harassed than usual? Yosuke couldn't blame him. If he'd had to look Adachi in the eyes every day of his life, he'd be worn down too. At least, one of them would. Yosuke liked to think that if they were alone together for long enough, the one who'd come out the worse for wear would be Adachi. No matter how many times Yosuke came to the Velvet Room, and no matter how many times he found Adachi there, he'd never manage to get used to it. He didn't even want to try. Now that Adachi had infiltrated the Velvet Room, not even the power of persona was sacred anymore.

"Is there a way that I can be of assistance today?" asked Igor. He gave Adachi a pointed look, but the other man apparently wasn't even paying attention.

"Um," murmured Nanako, glancing at Yosuke for approval before speaking up, "We're here because we want to ask you something."

"Yeah," agreed Chie, with significantly more bravado than Yosuke imagined she really felt. "We're ready for this to be over. We want to solve the shadow thing once and for all!"

"We can't allow this to go on forever," agreed Yukiko. "We would never survive it. Neither would Yu and Minako-chan. There has to be another way."

Igor raised an eyebrow at Yosuke, which sent a little shiver down his spine. "What," asked Igor, "exactly are you proposing to do?"

No one really seemed to have an answer to that. Unfortunately, that meant that they all ended up looking to their leader for guidance, and since Yosuke was now officially the leader, he felt he had to say something.

Unfortunately, all that he had at his disposal was the truth. "Um, I don't know," he admitted. "We were kinda hoping that you could tell us that."

Much to Yosuke's relief, Igor didn't seem to think that was anything to be worried about. Instead, he nodded gravely, and took a slow, thoughtful look around at the assembled group.

"You are familiar," he told them, "of the way that the great seal was formed?"

Of course, thought Yosuke. How could he forget? First Minako, and then Yu had sacrificed all or part of themselves to help form the seal. As far as he understood it, neither of them had been fully aware of what they were doing at the time, either.

"Yeah," said Kanji. "Sure, we know. What about it?"

"The doors within the minds of your friends," continued Igor, "can also be sealed from the inside, if you wish to protect them permanently from the onslaught of the shadows."

No, thought Yosuke. No, that wasn't what he had wanted to hear at all. "You mean," he asked Igor, "that the only way to permanently block out the shadows is to make a seal? The same kind of seal that we're using to keep that Nyx thing out?"

Igor didn't say anything. Instead, he just looked at Yosuke, who found the unfaltering gaze too disconcerting to sit silently under for long.

"Minako and Yu had to die to create the seal against Nyx," he continued. "Does that mean that someone has to die for us to block the shadows out? You know we can't do that. That's not an option. We need something else."

Igor shrugged. "What if there is no other way?" he asked.

At first, Yosuke didn't have an answer to that. It seemed like such a ridiculous question. "Then, it's impossible," he insisted. "That means there's no way at all. "

"Big Bro and Minako would never want anyone to get hurt," agreed Nanako.

Yosuke knew she was right, and yet something about the way she'd said it made him remember that it was, essentially his fault that Yu had gotten hurt in the first place. Minako could blame herself all she wanted, and there had been a time when he'd been happy to blame her too, but…in the end, she'd offered to give herself up for Yu, and it had been Yosuke who had stopped her. Yosuke had insisted on the separated souls, and Yosuke had condemned them both to be plagued by shadows for the rest of their lives. It wasn't and would never be Minako's fault that Yu was suffering. It was Yosuke's, and there was no other way of looking at it.

If he was capable of just letting his partner get hurt like that, he wondered, was he really the right person to be a leader? Wasn't a leader supposed to have all the answers, and to make sure that all the members of his team got out of each and every scrape alive? Yu had always done that. Everyone had trusted him to watch their backs and to make sure that no harm came to them. How could Yosuke be a leader with a track record like the one he already had?

"No," repeated Yosuke. "That's not good enough. How can you ask me to sacrifice someone to save someone else? It doesn't work that way. What am I supposed to do, play rock, paper scissors to figure out who's worth more? No way. That's insane. Give us something else."

Igor just spread his hands out in front of him in a gesture of impotence. Yosuke closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Forget it," he muttered. "Fine, if you can't help us, then we'll figure it out ourselves."

"Yosuke," began Teddie, but Yosuke just shook his head.

"Come on, guys," he said. "Let's get out of here. We need a new game plan. We'll have to talk things through and then regroup when we've figured it out."

**Later that day, at the Dojima residence…**

Yosuke sat by himself next to the window, watching as the others chatted or watched TV on the sofa, relaxing and celebrating the fact that the crew was finally reunited after a six month hiatus.

"Don't worry about it," he'd assured them all, when they'd wandered together out of the Velvet Room. "We'll find another way. Igor doesn't know everything there is about persona stuff, anyway. We were the ones that figured out how to get Yu out of the seal, right? We did it once, and we'll do it again. Just leave it to me."

He wasn't sure exactly why he'd included that last part. If there was anything Yosuke really didn't want, it was to have everything left up to him, just for him to mess up like he had the last time. He had just been so anxious to see them all looking happy again after that talk with Igor, that he'd said some things he wasn't sure he was ready to mean.

At least, he realized, it had worked. Apparently convinced by Yosuke's enthusiastic denial of Igor's words, the rest of the team now seemed to be having a reasonably good time. As far as he could tell, he was the only one who'd remained unconvinced by his speech, probably because he knew better than anyone just how unfounded it was.

"Hey, senpai," said Kanji, wandering over in Yosuke's direction. "Aren't you gonna come talk with us? Naoto wants to hear all about your school. She won't shut up about 'the benefits of academic advancement,' and all Chie seems to know is that there's a good all-night gym on campus."

"Yeah, sorry," mumbled Yosuke. "I'm not really the right person to ask about that either.

Yu rolled up on the other side of Yosuke, glancing over his shoulder at Minako, who seemed to be chatting to Nanako about something in hushed but urgent tones. "Yeah, that reminds me," said Yu. "You were about to tell us something after we all got off the train. I think it was about the girls you met in college."

"Oh, yeah!" Yosuke was relieved to have something totally normal to talk about. "Okay, so, do you remember that trip that we took to Tatsumi Port Island, during your first year in school with us?"

Both Yu and Kanji nodded. It had, Yosuke had to admit, been a pretty memorable trip.

"Right, so," he continued. "There was that girl, right? Chihiro Fushimi?"

"Uh, the really cute one?" asked Kanji.

"She was nervous," Yu remembered. "Something about a speech inspired by her old senpai."

Yosuke nodded. "Yup," he said, "that's the one. Man, I thought she was gorgeous when I saw her on that field trip, but when I spotted her in my World History class on the second week of school…seriously, college makes everything better! Even the girls get cuter!"

"Really?" Yu grinned at him. "That's an impressive coincidence."

Yosuke nodded. "You're telling me!" he agreed. "Anyway, so I asked her if she'd tutor me for the midterm exams, but she had too many papers to write. She's double majoring in something and something else, I guess. She did say, though, that if I ever needed extra help, I could find her working in the library after six PM."

Kanji and Yu exchanged a look that was somehow impressed and disbelieving at the same time.

"So?" asked Kanji. "Did you go and see her?"

Yosuke sighed. Again, the truth was his only viable option. "Nah," he said. "The library is a frightening place. I'm worried I might get lost there and eaten by whatever horrifying monsters are lurking in between the stacks. Maybe I'll go try it after the break, but…"

"Horrifying monsters?" asked Yu. "Yosuke, you've spent years fighting shadows. What could be scarier than that?"

Yosuke held out his hands in a warding gesture. "Dude," he told Yu, "you have clearly never met a senior in the middle of writing a thesis…meeting one of them in the hall is like a near death experience all in itself. Going into the library at this time of year? That's pretty much the same thing as having a deathwish."

There was a moment of silence, during which Kanji looked thoughtful, and Yu looked simply amused.

"Wow, senpai," murmured Kanji. "College sounds scary."

Yosuke nodded gravely. "All I can say," he told the other two, "is that it is seriously good to be home."

**Two - December 17**

**Author's Note: **I apologize for not updating last night as promised. I was unable to finish the chapter, because I got distracted by a Bond movie that Dag was watching, and before I knew it, it was one in the morning, and Dag insisted that I go to bed and stop this nonsense.

…I love movies where lots of things explode. Seriously.

Anyway, because I wasn't able to keep my updating promise last night, I am doing it now.

Warning: My eyes are acting up today. It's hard to focus on the page in front of me; things keep getting blurry and indistinct. Please forgive me if there are an unexpected number of typos, I promise to fix them ASAP if I catch them. You're marvelous for being so patient with me. Thank you so much!

We're not advancing the plot too much with this chapter, but we are setting up some important character conflicts. Stay tuned for more action in our next chapter, when Nanako makes an important discovery related to her persona ability…

**Two – December 17**

Nanako was having what she thought of as "an identity crisis." Dad had once tried to explain that an identity crisis was what happened when you couldn't figure out who you were. Nanako had thought that was very strange, since even little babies usually knew their own name, but Dad had explained that it was a grown up thing and that she didn't have to spend any time worrying about it.

Now, Nanako was worried about it. She was worried because she had suddenly realized that there were too many people she wanted to be, and she couldn't decide on which person she wanted to be the most.

Until recently, she'd been sure that she wanted to grow up to be just like Chie. Chie was powerful, strong, funny, and a really nice person. She could beat up all the bad guys and protect herself just as well as any of the boys could. She could protect her friends, too, and she always did. Nanako thought that was fantastic. Then, Nanako had started realizing that maybe she wanted to be beautiful and kind, like Yukiko. That, of course, was harder, because although Nanako knew how to train like Chie did, she did not know how to just "look pretty" like Yukiko seemed to. Kindness, she knew, was something you could manage just by thinking about how other people felt, but beauty was a whole different problem. It was something, she hoped, that she'd learn about as she got older, although at the moment, things weren't looking good.

Then, just today, she'd realized that what she really wanted was to be just like Minako. Minako was amazing. She always had opinions, and she was always active. She never backed down or let anyone tell her what not to do. Somehow, she could make anyone do anything she wanted, just by smiling at them. That morning, when Nanako had read off of the chart that it was her turn to go on patrol in the Velvet Room with Junpei, Yosuke had been really angry. He had refused to let the two of them go in together, insisting that there was no reason why they couldn't wait until next week, when Yosuke would be available instead.

It hadn't been until Minako had stepped in on Junpei's behalf that Yosuke had been willing to give up and let Nanako and Junpei take the patrol. It seemed that whenever Minako suggested something, it was always a good idea, and that whenever Minako liked someone, everyone else ended up liking that person as well.

Of course, Nanako knew, there were exceptions to that rule. After all, she was starting to suspect that Minako might like Adachi, and there was no doubt that everyone else still didn't like him. Everyone, that is, except for Nanako herself.

The problem, of course, was that Nanako realized that there was no way she could possibly grow up to be all of these people at the same time. Dad and Big Bro both agreed that it was important for her to have goals. Her teacher, too, was always choosing things about Nanako's schoolwork that they needed to "focus on" together. That all made sense. Since she couldn't do everything at once, Nanako would have to try to do one thing at a time.

The question was, what was it the right time to do first? Who would be the best person for Nanako to be, right at this moment? Was there a particular kind of person that Nanako needed to be, in order to get better at all the things she had to do as the Wild Card, or inside the Velvet Room?

She was still lost in these frustrating reflections as she and Junpei, finally cleared to go on patrol, walked together through the Velvet Room door.

"Sup," said Junpei, nodding in Igor's direction. "We're here for the shadows, man. Anything we should be worried about?"

"I am not aware," Igor informed him, "of any disturbances at this time."

For some reason, neither Junpei nor Igor seemed to even notice Adachi. Nanako, feeling the injustice of just ignoring him like that, spoke up.

"Good morning, Adachi-san!" she said.

For the first time since they'd come in, Adachi 's eyes lost their glazed over look, and he blinked at Nanako, nodding. "Yeah," he said. "Sure, if you say it is."

There was a beat of silence between them, until Igor coughed, not as politely at usual, and Adachi started, then stood up, shooting a slightly resentful look in Igor's direction.

"Right, so you're going into that room again?" he asked. "I guess that means I'm coming too. Let's…just get this over with."

He pushed open the door to the nightmare room, revealing an emptiness that made Nanako breath out a little, hopefully unnoticed sigh of relief. If there was nothing in here today, then hopefully that meant Big Bro and Minako weren't going to have any trouble for a while.

Junpei, on the other hand, seemed less relieved. He made sure to push open the door to Minako's mind, and check carefully inside before nodding to himself, and returning to Nanako.

"Looks like we're good," he told her.

Nanako, in turn, tried to push open Yu's mind door, and was very frustrated when she found that it was, for some reason, too heavy today for her to open by herself.

"You okay?" asked Junpei, as he planted his feet to help her with the door. "Not feeling so good? Here, let me handle it. Shouldn't be letting little kids do a man's work anyway."

Nanako bristled. "I'm not little," she informed him hotly. "And it's not 'man's' work either. I bet you wouldn't say stuff like that if Minako was around."

The slightly sheepish look on Junpei's face told Nanako that she was right, he probably wouldn't have dared.

"Besides," she continued, "I'm plenty strong. I've been working with Chie every day to get better and better, and I bet she could open that door without any help. Chie's the best."

They looked inside the room, and found that it too was empty. As Junpei closed the door again, he told Nanako, "if you've been working out with her every day, that's probably why you couldn't do it. Sometimes, you gotta take a break. Otherwise you'll burn out and get hurt."

Nanako didn't say anything to that. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of hearing her admit that, yes, she was tired, and she probably could use just a little bit of a break. Sitting on the sofa and watching TV all day sounded like a really fun idea right now, but she wasn't willing to do that while everyone else was working to find the answer to Big Bro's problems.

"I'm fine," she said instead. "Don't worry about me."

That, she decided, wasn't really fair. After all, Junpei was probably just trying to be helpful. Boys sometimes ended up just making her mad when they tried to be helpful. Minako had explained that boys were particularly annoying when they liked you or cared about you, and Nanako knew, of course, that Minako was right, particularly about the boys that went to Nanako's school with her. Junpei, however, was supposed to be a man, not a boy, and he shouldn't have been able to be quite so annoying.

If his being annoying meant that he cared about her, she thought, then that was probably a good thing. After all, she'd never been totally sure about Junpei. Although she didn't like to think too much about it, he had been the one who had dragged her into the Velvet Room in the first place. Not that she was mad, anymore. Big Bro had explained that Junpei had only done it because he was so scared that Minako might get hurt if he didn't, and that made sense.

What, Nanako wondered, would she do if she thought that Big Bro might get hurt again? Would she point a gun at someone like that? She didn't have a gun, of course, so it was a stupid question for her to be asking herself, but…

"This…is just kinda creepy," muttered Adachi, looking over at the columns that had once been the three Velvet Room assistants. "I mean, I've heard of the walls having ears, but…this takes it to a whole, weird-ass new level."

"Those are my friends," mumbled Nanako. "And they are not creepy, or weird."

While Junpei and Adachi walked back through the door and into the Velvet Room, Nanako stayed behind and stared thoughtfully at the columns.

"I'm sorry that I didn't bring anything for you, today," she said out loud, positive that even though there was no response, the assistants could hear her. "I'm on a patrol with Junpei. We're checking to make sure that there aren't any shadows in here."

A new thought struck her, one that hadn't occurred to her before, and she frowned. "Do the shadows hurt you, too, when they come?" she asked. What would happen, she wondered, if a shadow came to try and break down the walls again? If the walls broke, what would happen to Theodore, Margaret, and Elizabeth? Would they die, or would they just turn into something else, like they had before when she'd needed their help to save Big Bro and Minako?

"No, I won't let that happen," she promised them. "Don't worry. I'll make sure that you, and Big Bro, and Minako and everyone else are all safe, okay? So don't be scared."

Again, there was no response, but Nanako knew that she could feel something, as though there was warmth and calm radiating off of the columns in response to her own need. There was no reason for her to tell them not to be scared, she knew. She was the one who was really scared. What was she scared of? That didn't seem to have an easy answer. Nanako wished for a moment that she was more like Theodore and Margaret. They always seemed to know the right answers to every question, and if they'd been able to tell her, they might have cleared up all sorts of things that were bothering her right now.

"Okay," she said, giving a little wave before turning around to follow Junpei back into the Velvet Room. "I'll come back soon, I promise. Next time, I'll make you some new pictures, okay? Um…bye."

Just as she was about to leave, Nanako thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, lying on the ground right next to the column that had once been Elizabeth. Reaching down, Nanako picked it up, and found herself holding a persona card, just like the ones she already had of Icarus, Angel, and Dawn.

This one, however, was different. The picture on this card wasn't anything beautiful, soothing, or even friendly looking like her other cards. This one was terrifying. It looked to her like a horrible creature in black clothes, with a sword in one hand, and coffins coming out of its head and neck.

"Um…" Nanako frowned uncertainly at the card. "Is…is this for me? Am I supposed to take this?"

She didn't really want it, she decided. Unlike Icarus, this persona certainly didn't look like anything she wanted to carry around inside her mind.

Still, it was always impolite to reject a gift. Bowing slightly, Nanako murmured, "Well, thank you very much," to Elizabeth, before tucking the card hastily into her pocket and hurrying back out of the room.

"Hey, what took you so long?" asked Junpei, giving her a frantic little glare as she emerged back into the Velvet Room. "I was starting to get really freaked out. Mina-tan would beat the crap out of me if she thought I'd let something happen to you in here."

"I'm sorry," murmured Nanako distractedly. "I was talking to Elizabeth."

"Yeah…" Junpei frowned at her. "You didn't uh…hear her talking back to you, did you?"

Nanako blinked. "No, they don't say anything," she told him. "They can hear me anyway, though. Sometimes they laugh."

"Uh huh." Junpei paused for a moment, apparently trying to figure out what he wanted to say. "Hey, Nanako-chan, remember what I was saying before, about how you might need a break from all of the working out, and fighting and stuff? I'm really starting to think that would be a good idea…"

"Why?" lied Nanako. "I don't feel tired."

"Right," agreed Junpei, "but…um…you know what, maybe you'd better talk to Yosuke about it. He's…he'll probably know what I'm talking about."

**Three - December 18**

**Author's Note: **Dear god, what a day. Well, at least the multiple hours during which I was stuck on a stalled metro train allowed me some extra time to think through what I'd be doing for this chapter.

And now, Minako and Yosuke, because they are my two favorite characters.

And, uh, whoops, I apologize. The important Nanako discovery I mentioned? That's in the next chapter. I really do have to learn to be better at figuring out chapter length and how long certain scenes will take…someday, maybe I'll get there. Just one more establishing character shot, and then we get into the real action. Next chapter (I promise, this time) Nanako and Teddie make an enlightening discovery, and Yosuke, Yu, and Minako start looking for the answer to an old problem. Next time, on **Piecekeeping…**

**Three – December 18**

Yosuke was not expecting a surprise attack. He was minding his own business, finishing up his shift handing out flyers for an upcoming Junes event, when Minako suddenly appeared in the crowd, and headed straight for him with a look of determined, self-righteous vengeance on her face.

"Ack," muttered Yosuke. He wasn't too sure what he'd done, but it was obviously something, and now he had no place and no time in which to hide.

"Yosuke!" called Minako, forcing her way through groups of milling patrons. "What was that all about, yesterday? When are you going to man up and get over yourself?"

Yosuke just blinked at her. "Uh, yesterday…" he said, trying to remember what heinous crime he'd committed the day before. Yesterday was…hey, what are we talking about?"

"You know exactly what we're talking about," Minako assured him. Yosuke inwardly begged to differ. "The way you keep flying off the handle at Junpei," Minako continued, clarifying things slightly. "Look, Yosuke, it's been over a year since we re-sealed Nyx. You have to let it go. All the others have let it go. Even Nanako isn't angry. If she doesn't care, then why should you?"

Finally, things began to make sense to Yosuke, and his face hardened slightly as he shook his head. "No can do," he muttered. "I get that he's your friend, but…"

"But nothing!" Minako was now half-commanding, half-pleading. "He's done everything he can to be a good member of this team. The least you can do is treat him like one!"

"He tried," Yosuke reminded her, "to kill my best friend's little sister."

"No, he didn't!" insisted Minako. "It wasn't even a real gun. He got scared. Everyone gets scared. If there's anyone you should be blaming for this, it's me, not him. I'm the one that put you all in that position in the first place."

Yosuke sighed. There they went again, he thought, rehashing and going back over all of the same arguments they'd had before They'd been having this conversation on and off ever since that fateful day in the Velvet Room when Minako and Yu had each sacrificed parts of themselves to protect the rest of the world, and the rest of each other. Now, all they seemed to spend their time doing was hoarding the guilt or throwing it back and forth.

"Don't take this the wrong way, or anything," muttered Yosuke, "but it sounds like I'm not the only one who has to learn to let things go."

Minako was silent for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed. "That's funny…I feel like I was just having this conversation with someone last night. You know, about how it's important not to hold grudge and to try and move on with your life. Didn't we agree that we were going to focus on moving on?"

Yosuke thought about the confident speech he'd given to the rest of the team, about how they were definitely going to save Yu and Minako, without having to sacrifice anything or anyone in order to do it. "Yeah," he mumbled. "Well, people say a lot of things they don't really mean." Shaking himself to try and get rid of the gloom, he asked, "Who were you talking to about grudges last night?"

"Uh, well." For some reason, Minako sounded suddenly flustered. "I…it's funny, but I don't remember. Maybe I should be getting more sleep…"Biting her lip, she frowned awkwardly for a moment, then abruptly changed the subject. "So, uh, have you seen the news lately?"

Yosuke had, quite honestly, been avoiding the news. Just last week, he'd seen on TV that an Inaba schoolteacher had been strangled to death not too far from Junes. She'd been a teacher at Nanako's elementary school, and the idea that someone had gotten that close to people he cared about had kept him awake and paranoid for the next two nights straight. This couldn't, he knew, have anything to do with the murders that had take place the year before, but nonetheless, they brought back all sorts of memories that Yosuke had spent a long time working to suppress.

"I…sort of," he said, noncommittally. "Why? What happened"

"They found another body yesterday," Minako told him. "A seventeen year old girl named Hinata, outside Shiroku."

"Seventeen…" Yosuke shuddered involuntarily. Saki-senpai had been seventeen when they'd found her body, too. That image was still just as vivid in his mind now as it had been the day he'd seen the photo on the news of her hanging there upside down.

"Okay," said Minako, taking a deep breath. "Tell you what. Why don't we start this conversation over, from the top? I'm going to go over there, turn around, walk back over to you, and we're going to find something….a little happier to talk about. Okay?"

Yosuke almost smiled. "You'll be less angry this time, right?"

"I'll give it my best effort," Minako promised him.

Yosuke had genuinely thought that she was joking, but Minako actually turned around, walked away, then turned again and came back towards him with a much brighter, sort of plastic smile pasted on her face.

"Good morning!" she said. "How's work?"

Yosuke laughed. "Fine, I guess," he said. "How's yours? Shouldn't you be at the station right now?"

"Probably." Minako shrugged. "I had some errands I wanted to run. Besides, I haven't really gotten a chance to talk to you since you came home. At the party the other night, you just wandered off and I couldn't find you again. I wanted to say hi."

Judging by the way she'd born down on her with vengeance in her eyes just a few moments ago, Yosuke didn't totally buy her story, but he decided that he was willing to go along with it. "Yeah, well," he said. "There's been a lot to think about."

"Want to talk about it?" asked Minako.

"I don't think so." Yosuke shook his head. "We're supposed to be talking about happy things, right? So…maybe another time."

"Okay," agreed Minako. "Then, how about this? I heard a rumor that you may have met a special lady at school his year."

Yosuke opened his mouth in surprise, then closed it again, trying to figure out where Minako might have heard something like that. "Kanji," he said under his breath, realization suddenly dawning. "Why can't that guy keep his mouth shut, just once?"

Minako was insistent. "No," she assured him, "there's a point to this, trust me. That girl, Chihiro Fushimi? I think I went to school with her, back at Gekkoukan. I'm pretty sure we were even on student council together, although I didn't get to talk to her much. Nobody, as far as I know, talked to her much. Junpei says she ran away when he'd accidentally bump into her in the hall."

"That…sounds like Chihiro-senpai," agreed Yosuke. "She's not really the social butterfly type."

"Right!" Minako was clearly warming to the topic. "So, I had this fantastic idea!"

Suddenly, Yosuke was worried. "Wait, an idea? An idea about what? Nobody told you to have an idea."

Minako frowned at him. "See, that's the funny thing about ideas. Sometimes they just happen without permission. Anyway, I figure it's probably hard for you to get to talk to her, especially if she spends most of her time running away, right? So, what if we held a little 'student council reunion' here in Inaba? Mitsuru and I would come, and we'd see if we could get Hidetoshi to come too, although he probably won't make it. He wasn't too social either. Anyway, then you'd have her here, in your hometown, over the winter break, and you might finally have a chance to really get to know her."

Minako beamed as if she had just come up with a foolproof solution to the problem of world peace. Yosuke, on the other hand, was suspicious.

"Who put you up to this?" he demanded. "Seriously, how many of you are in on this thing?"

Minako sighed. "I told you," she said, "this was my own idea." Yosuke, however, continued to stare expectantly at her, and she must have been able to feel the stare, because eventually, she quailed. "Okay, maybe Yu and Kanji have something to do with it…and it's possible that Chie and Yukiko were in favor of the idea. Rise wants to try going on another double date."

Yosuke groaned, just thinking about the catastrophic "double date" that he and Minako had gone on with Rise and Junpei only a few months before. "All of you?" he asked incredulously. "What the…is this some kind of conspiracy?"

Minako apparently needed a moment to figure out how to answer that question. "Well, you see…" she said eventually. "It all comes back to that thing about needing to move on with our lives. Remember how you told me that you hadn't been on a date since the death of that girl you liked in high school?"  
Yosuke winced to hear her put it so bluntly, but Minako soldiered on.

"Enough is enough," she finished. "Look, you're always telling me that we can't keep looking back and feeling guilty about what happened, but…we're both doing it, aren't we? Maybe it's time we both started living a little bit. Think of this as…an intervention."

The idea of Minako and Yu intervening on Yosuke's behalf was a little bit funny in a not-so-funny way. The two people in the world whom Yosuke could honestly say had way more legitimate problems than he did right now were trying to help him get a date. "We're in the middle of a huge crisis," he said, around his thoughts."There's stuff we have to do."

"And what if this goes on forever?" Minako pressed him. "Are you going to devote the rest of your life to making sure that Yu and I stop having headaches? Are you guys really gonna give up being normal people so that you can spend all the time inside the Velvet Room? No, that's…that's insane. Look, Yosuke, this was never supposed to be the way things turned out for you. We want you to be really happy, okay?"

Something about the way she had phrased that last part bothered Yosuke a lot. It sounded almost as though she was getting ready to die. "We want you to be happy," was the sort of thing people said when they got the bad news from their doctor, or when they knew that they were never going to see you again. It wasn't the sort of thing you were supposed to just asy to your friend out of nowhere, in the middle of the food court.

"Are you giving up?" he demanded.

Minako shook her head. "Of course not. I'm not giving up, but…"

"But what?" Yosuke could feel his temper rising slightly. "Why are you acting like this is the end, like we gotta make a decision, right now, about the rest of our lives?"

Minako chewed on her lip again. Yosuke wished that he could meet her eyes, but even without that, her expression was transparent enough.

"Someone told you," he said slowly. "Someone told you what Igor said the other day, in the Velvet Room, about sealing up your minds. You're telling me that it's okay for me to let it go, aren't you? You're not giving up, you want me to give up. That's what this is, isn't it?"

"I…" mumbled Minako. "Yosuke, I don't want anyone else to get hurt. I couldn't live with that. I don't think any of us could. Maybe it's time to just put this thing to rest and let things play out the way they…"

"No!" Now, Yosuke really was angry. "Hell no! What kind of a guy do you think I am? You think I'd just give up on my best friend like that? After everything we went through to make sure that you and he came out of this alive in the first place?"

"He's not just your best friend," Minako reminded him. "You're his best friend, too."

At first, Yosuke had no idea what she even meant by that.

"You know how it felt when Yu got hurt?" she continued, insistently. "That's how it would feel to him if something happened to you. And…Yosuke, I feel the same way. It's not like we could go on and have happy, successful lives knowing that we had them because of something you or someone else killed yourselves doing."

"What am I supposed to do, then?" asked Yosuke, half hoping that she might really have an answer for him. "I don't know what else there is to try."

Minako just shook her head. "I don't know," she said apologetically. "But…I needed to say something. I need you to know that you can walk away. You can all still walk away from this, understand? Anyway. I have to go to work, but…we can talk more later. I wasn't kidding about Chihiro. Think about my 'reunion' 'idea, anyway."

As Minako started towards the police station, Yosuke clenched both of his fists.

She didn't know him nearly as well as she thought she did, apparently. If anything, what she had just said had only strengthened his resolve. Minako hadn't walked away from him or from Yu when the two of them had needed her to come to the rescue. There was no way he was going to turn around and betray her now.

**Four - December 18**

**Author's Note: **Hello everyone!

Okay, so, let's just decide right now that we are no longer going to announce what's going to be happening in future chapters. I seem to be changing my mind about the placement of certain events quite a bit. Oops.

Also, introducing Dojima's POV! It's time he got some say in this story, especially now that he's inevitably becoming more aware of the things that are going on around him and in the Velvet Room. We will see a lot more of him later, and he will get more involved as the story progresses. At least it's not Adachi. This character should be a lot easier to write, right? Right. Fingers crossed, everybody.

I apologize for the fact that there have been slightly fewer updates lately. Life has been even more hectic than usual at work and at home. Please bear with me, and I promise that I'll start updating more regularly as soon as things get back to normal around here. Honest!

**Four – December 18**

As Yosuke stood, lost in a flood of newfound determination, Nanako came running up to him.

"Yosuke?" she asked, looking at the packet of flyers he still held in his hand. "Um, I know you're busy, but can I ask you something?"

"Sure," Yosuke stuffed the flyers into his pocket. It wasn't like this was important, anyway, it was just a job to pass some time and make some money over the break. "What's wrong?"

Nanako held something out to him, and Yosuke picked it out her hand. It was a persona card, although it wasn't one that Yosuke had ever seen before. It was pretty hideous, too, scary-looking, like something you'd have nightmares about that you wouldn't want to admit to your friends in the morning.

"What is this?" he asked her.

Nanako sighed. "Oh," she mumbled. "I was going to ask that…"

"Going to ask what?" Teddie emerged from inside the grocery department, munching on something that Yosuke was sure he shouldn't have been eating, and had probably charmed away from some poor, gullible older saleswoman. "Hi, Nana-chan! Oooh, what's that?"

Without waiting for a response, Teddie snatched the persona card out of Yosuke's hand, and looked at it.

"Do you know what it is?" asked Nanako.

"Of course he doesn't," mumbled Yosuke. "How would Teddie know anything about-!"

"This is bad," said Teddie, and the suddenly serious, worried tone in his usually obnoxiously chipper voice made Yosuke stop mid-sentence. "This is a really bad thing…I don't know why, but…I get a bad feeling just thinking about this persona."

Nanako frowned. "Yeah," she said. "I do too."

Yosuke, who also got chills down his spine when he looked at that card, decided that he nevertheless had to be the voice of reason in this conversation. "Hey, come on," he cajoled them. "It can't be all that awful, right? I mean, it's a persona. They're the good guys. Or…we're the good guys, and they're the guys that make the good guys…the good guys." He stopped, frowning. Okay, that could have come out a little better.

"What about Magatsu Izanagi?" countered Teddie, with unexpected clarity. "Adachi-baby's no good guy, and he can use a persona."

Good point, thought Yosuke. So, was Teddie saying that this persona was the kind of persona that came from the soul of someone like Adachi? That was a disturbing thought. Were there more evil people out there in the world with the power to use persona?

"Where did you get this?" he demanded.

"Elizabeth gave it to me," said Nanako, without missing a beat.

Yosuke tried to exchange a knowing, significant look with Teddie, but Teddie wasn't co-operating. Teddie never seemed bothered by the idea of Nanako talking to dead or nonexistent people. Then again, thought Yosuke, Teddie was still figuring out how the human world really worked. Maybe he didn't really understand yet that other people just didn't do things like that.

"She did give it to me," insisted Nanako, apparently seeing the dubious expression on Yosuke's face. "She wanted me to have this, so she left it at the bottom of her statue for me!'

Nanako sounded annoyed, but Yosuke was at least a little bit relieved. If it had been sitting at the bottom of the column, then at least Nanako wasn't now hallucinating that Elizabeth had given it to her in person. He knew, of course, that witnessing death, like Nanako had, could sometimes be terribly traumatic, and Nanako was only eight years old. They'd all been hoping for months that the events in the Velvet Room hadn't psychologically scarred Nanako for life, but conversations like this were starting to make him feel as though maybe the damage was worse than they'd originally thought.

"Oh, I know!" announced Teddie suddenly. "Let's ask Mina-chan about it! She knows all sorts of things about persona! She was using it even before we were!"

"We can't show he the card," Yosuke reminded him. "She won't' be able to see it, and I don't know if we can easily describe something like this…"

Teddie looked crestfallen. "Oh," he mumbled. "Yeah, that's right…"

"How about Junpei?" asked Nanako. "He and Minako are friends, so…they probably talk about stuff. Maybe he'll know what this is."

Yosuke's knee-jerk reaction was to reject that, and to tell Nanako that she should be staying away from Junpei as much as possible. He opened his mouth to tell her that, but managed to catch Teddie's eye just in time. Teddie was beaming hopefully at him. Nanako was smiling enthusiastically at him. There was very little that he could let himself do to crush their dreams in the face of all that rampant positivity.

Besides, he told himself. Maybe, at least about that, Minako had been right. She'd told him that it was time to get over things and move on. Some things he'd never be able to get over, but there was something to be said for picking his battles, and he'd chosen a few pretty spectacular ones already.

"Okay," he relented, with a little sigh of defeat. "That's not such a bad idea. We'll go ask Junpei."

There was still another half an hour left on Yosuke's shift, so Teddie wandered away to slack off with Nanako while Yosuke finished handing out the flyers. When he was done, Yosuke looked for his friends and found them in the electronics department, playing one of the new try-before-you-buy video game consoles off in a corner.

"Pow!" said Nanako. "Wham! Bang! Oooh, I got you, Teddie!"

"Hey, kids aren't supposed to be playing violent video games like this," Yosuke told her. "It's against the store policy."

Nanako turned around, and blinked innocently up at him. "But, this is just like fighting shadows," she explained. "It's like practice for making them explode! Boom!"

Yosuke took a deep breath. Right, he thought. Well, okay, in light of all the fighting she'd been doing recently, even combat-style video games seemed kind of like old news. The world, he realized, was turning into a place that his parents would probably have been afraid to raise him in…or maybe that was just his world. The rest of the universe, still unaware of the existence of shadows, and persona, was still oblivious to the fact that violent video games were the least of their concerns.

The three of them walked together over to Daidara's store, where they found Junpei, as usual, yawning and trying not to fall asleep behind the counter. Daidara himself was nowhere to be found, something that happened quite frequently now that he had someone else to watch the store when he felt like going out. Attempts at theft had been a problem in the past, but Junpei usually handled those pretty quickly. Even Yosuke had to admit that Junpei was pretty quick on his feet.

"Welcome to Daidara's-oh, hey!" Junpei brightened up when he saw who had come in, although he did give Yosuke just the hint of a surly look before turning to address Nanako and Teddie. "Whatcha guys need today? In the market for some new weapons? Dude, I just got this sweet new sword…can't wait to show it off and take out some shadows, man!"

"Hey, Junpei," began Teddie, holding tout the persona card. "Do you know what this is? Nana-chan found it in the Velvet Room."

She hadn't found it, thought Yosuke. She said Elizabeth had "given it" to her. He glanced at Teddie in surprise, and saw the innocent, guileless look on Teddie's face. Was Teddie covering for Nanako after all? Maybe he did understand more about the human world than Yosuke had previously thought.

"Yeah? Okay, let me take a look. After all," said Junpei importantly, "I am a little more experienced than you kids when it comes to stuff like…oh shit!"

The card fell out of Junpei's hands and fluttered to the floor. Nanako bent down to retrieve it.

"What's wrong?" asked Yosuke. "What the hell is that thing?"

"It's, um…" Junpei didn't look too happy. "Thanatos, huh? Well, it's…it's Ryoji. I mean, it's not, but…it's sort of like death, and Ryoji was death, and it looks…I mean, he looked…dude, where did you say you got this?"

"Elizabeth gave-!" began Nanako.

"What do you mean 'death?'" interrupted Yosuke. "What's death got to do with it? Is this a bad persona?"

"Are you kidding? No way," said Junpei. "This one's crazy strong. This was Mina-tan's persona, back in the day…or, one of them, anyway."

"So," said Yosuke, "we should probably ask her about it."

For some reason, Junpei didn't seem to like that idea. He frowned, nodded once to himself, and then looked Yosuke straight in the eyes.

"Nah," he said. "Just leave her alone about it. We don't need to talk about that stuff anymore, okay? All that crazy shit that happened, back when we sealed Nyx away for the first time…nobody wants to relive that. It's in the past. It's way in the past. Let's just…let's just let it go, okay? She doesn't need to know about finding this. It'll just bring back ugly memories. What's the point?"

Yosuke could see from the unexpectedly closed look on Junpei's face that he wasn't messing around. That was right, he thought. Minako had died to create the seal, just the same way that Yu had done almost two years ago.

Only, Yosuke realized, Yu had come back after a couple of months. Junpei hadn't gotten Minako back for more than three years.

"Let it go, okay?" repeated Junpei.

"Yeah," muttered Yosuke. "Sure. We don't have to bother her about it."

For the briefest of moments, Junpei and Yosuke understood each other.

Then, Teddie, interrupted.

"But…if we can't ask Mina-chan," he insisted, "then what should we do about it? This thing looks scary…I don't think Nana-chan should have it unless we know more about it first. Let's go and ask Igor, right now."

That seemed reasonable enough to everyone, so Yosuke and the others thanked Junpei, and turned back in the direction of Junes again.

**Meanwhile, at the Dojima residence…**

"Hey, anybody home?" called out Dojima, as he strode through the front door.

Yu was hanging out in front of the television, looking over a sheaf of papers that he had balanced on his lap. He looked up when the door opened, and Dojima saw that he had some large, dark circles under his eyes.

"You're exhausted," Dojima said, sitting down next to him. "What is this stuff, homework? I guess your mom wouldn't want to me to try to talk you out of doing that, but…shouldn't you be out, hanging with your friends? It's winter vacation, you're supposed to taking a break."

Yu smiled, and shook his head. "I'm still playing catch up from all the work I missed while I was stuck at home," he said. "If I'm going to graduate at the end of this year, I need to start working harder. Otherwise I'll be waving from the platform while Kanji, Naoto, and Rise go off to college next year without me."

"Yeah." Dojima sighed. "It probably wasn't easy watching your friends leave without you last year, I guess. Still I…it could have been a lot worse. It was a lot worse."

Yu gave him a look that Dojima couldn't read, and for once he was sure that it wasn't just his inability to understand the inner workings of teenagers. There was, and had probably always been something going on with Yu and his friends that Dojima didn't even come close to understanding, and there were nights that he still lay awake, trying not to wonder what those mysterious things might be. He was a detective, and it was his job to learn the truth, no matter what the cost.

Still, when it came to stuff like this, part of him worried that maybe he didn't want to know the truth. The truth wouldn't make the world any less of a scary place. If anything, it would only give him more things to wish he didn't have to worry about.

"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" asked Yu.

"Uh, right." Dojima nodded. "I forgot my lunch at home. Guess I'm getting old after all…I've been forgetting all kinds of things lately."

Apparently, Yu wasn't fooled. "If you'd forgotten your lunch, you would have sent Minako to get it," he reminded Dojima. "Either that, or you just wouldn't have eaten anything. You came back to check up on me, didn't you?"

"Uh," muttered Dojima, unwilling to admit to that. "Hey, isn't Nanako here? I thought she was with you."

Yu shook his head. "I think she went off to Junes to find Yosuke and Teddie. She offered to take me with her, but I really do have to get this homework done, and she's definitely safe with Yosuke, so…"

Dojima frowned. "Yeah, probably," he agreed. "Still, you've been reading the papers. We've got another murder case on our hands. Maybe I'm being a paranoid dad, but, even in broad daylight, she shouldn't be out wandering around. It'd be better if she'd stayed home with you."

He walked back to the door, shaking his head. Nanako was mature for her age…sometimes way too mature. She was already starting to act like a teenager, going off on her own without so much as a word as to where she was going to be, hanging out with a bunch of older boys…he didn't like it. Not, of course, that he didn't trust Hanamura and the others, but...it just wasn't right. Spending time with her Big Bro was one thing, but…

"Where are you going?" asked Yu. "Back to the station?"

"Nah," growled Dojima. "I'll go back eventually. First I'm gonna go to Junes and round up that daughter of mine. When she comes back in, you keep her here, understand? I don't want her face to be the next one I see in the headlines."

"Hey, uncle Dojima," called Yu. "Wait!"

Dojima was already closing the door behind him.

**Five - December 18**

**Author's Note: **Today was a long day, but I did manage to type up a quick update for y'all. This is mostly good old Yosuke angst, followed by good clean fun…although this chapter, if you think about it, is going to open up a lot of doors for our intrepid heroes in the future. What has Nanako been given that persona at this point in her journey? What will it mean for her? How will Dojima decided to interpret the events of this chapter…?

Find out all this and more in our next update…but seriously, before that, I need to go and take a nap. Maybe all this Benadryl is just making it hard for me to keep my eyes open…

**Five – December 18**

Inside the Velvet Room, Yosuke, Nanako, and Teddie stood in front of Igor, while he glanced over the persona card that Elizabeth had left for Nanako. Igor's face was always so hard to read, thought Nanako with some patience. She couldn't tell what he was thinking about at all!

"Intriguing," he murmured.

"What? What's so intriguing about it?" asked Yosuke.

"This," continued Igor,"is Thanatos, the ultimate persona of the Death arcana. Once, this belonged to my assistant, Elizabeth…and before that, it resided inside the mind of one of our most successful former guests."

He's talking about Minako, thought Nanako. This was Minako's persona. She felt a little, involuntary thrill at the idea that she, Nanako Dojima, was now the owner of one of the original personas that Minako Arisato had used to save the world! Minako was so cool! Nanako felt a little bit cooler just thinking about it.

Yosuke, on the other hand, did not look very happy. "The death arcana?" he asked. "So that's…um." Frowning, he started again. "Wait, what does that even mean?"

"The Death arcana," murmured Igor, "is representative of the end of one journey, and perhaps a transition to another. The sorrow of goodbyes, or the regeneration of a new soul. With this card comes the possibility of remarkable change."

Remarkable change, thought Nanako. Was she going to change? Well, of course she was. After all, she was changing a bit more every day, wasn't she? Just that morning, Dad had said that he was sure she'd gotten taller in juts the past few days. She was smarter, now, too, smarter than she had been three weeks ago, or two months ago, or a year ago. Change was something that never stopped happening, and the more she changed, the more she had the chance to become the person she wanted to grow into. Change was a good thing! It was just like growing up!

"Huh?" asked Teddie. "Sorrow? Loss? Nana-chan? You're not lost, are you?"

"Sorrow? Endings?" added Yosuke. "Hey, if this thing means that Nanako's gonna…gonna die, then we don't want anything to do with it. You can take it back."

Igor shook his head. "It was never mine to give or to take," he informed them. "This card and this journey belong to the guest…now all that remains is to see if she can find a use for it."

Yosuke, however, wasn't listening to Igor's rationalization. "Minako died when she had this thing," he went on. Nanako could see little drops of sweat building up on his brow. "And Elizabeth, um…"

For some reason, Yosuke looked hesitantly over at Nanako before finishing that statement.

"It's okay," Nanako assured him. "I know about death. Elizabeth's not really dead."

Yosuke sighed. "Riiight…um, anyway. Both of them had something awful happen to them when they were using this card. So, what, is it cursed or something? Is it bad luck?"

"The holder provides the meaning to the card," Igor intoned. "The card has no significance without the holder."

That, thought Nanako, made a lot of sense. After all, she knew that there was no reason to get angry at objects, or things. They couldn't do anything by themselves. People could use them to make a mess, or break them, but that was some person's fault, not the object's fault. Trying to blame a thing for something that was really a person's fault counted as "not accepting responsibility," and responsibility was definitely a part of changing and growing up. Actually, thought Nanako with just a twinge of regret, responsibility was usually the less fun part, but…it wasn't really new. Nanako had been taking on new responsibilities all the time since he mother had died.

"That makes no sense!" shouted Yosuke. "Seriously, why don't you guys ever make any sense? Everything you say is just some kind of crazy riddle. Ugh, I wish Yu and Minako were here…they've always been better at this stuff anyway. Plus, they've got experience, they could probably…"

Nanako squeezed his hand. "I think you're a great leader, Yosuke." She told him. "Big Bro thinks so too! He's very proud of you."

Proud, thought Nanako, may not have been quite the right word to use. Proud was the sort of thing that parents would say to their children when a child came home with a good report from school. Still, Yosuke didn't look nearly as unhappy anymore, so obviously she'd done something right.

"Thanks, Nanako-chan," he muttered. "That…that was nice to hear."

"Are gonna go and check for shadows?" asked Teddie. "I mean, we are already here…"

Yosuke shook his head. He sounded tired. "Nah, not right now," he said. "I've had enough for one day. Besides, Nanako and Junpei already did that patrol. Let's just go home. I have some stuff I need to think about."

As they walked back towards the TV world entrance, Nanako peered up into Yosuke's face. He was thoughtful and quiet, looking much more serious and sad than he usually did.

"Yosuke?" she asked him. "What's wrong?"

He sighed. "I have no idea," he muttered. "I'm supposed to be in charge, now, right? So I'm supposed to be coming up with all the great plans to save the day. How do I even start doing that if I can't figure out what the first step is? It's not like this place comes with a manual…"

"I think," said Nanako thoughtfully, "that we're supposed to do it together. You know, as a team." She remembered the way Teddie had once told her that, too, was now a part of the team, when he'd given her that new pair of TV world glasses. What was there a team for, if they weren't supposed to work together?

"She's right," agreed Teddie. "Let's get everybody together and show them the Thanatos card. Maybe someone will have an idea! Oh, I bet Nao-chan knows all sorts of stuff about this! She's always super smart!"

Yosuke was just opening his mouth to reply to that when Nanako stopped walking. Teddie, walking behind her, almost plowed right into her, and Yosuke had to stop to glance back over his shoulder in confusion.

"What's up?" he asked.

Nanako didn't answer at first. She thought she could hear some noises coming from the entrance to the TV World. "Um," she said, "I think something's going on out there. Something loud. Maybe we should wait…it would be bad if anyone saw us coming out of the TV, right? They'd probably be pretty angry…"

"That's one word for it," agreed Yosuke. "Okay, let's wait and see."

**Meanwhile, in the Junes electronics department…**

Dojima had been looking all over for Nanako. After checking every single room and department in the entire store, he'd finally approached a sales clerk in the electronics department, and had demanded to know what had become of his daughter.

"Um, I…I can't be expected to keep track of every single customer," stammered the clerk helplessly. "If you say she was here with her friends, then maybe she went home with them? Shouldn't you try calling?"

"I did call!' shouted Dojima, making the clerk wince. "I called all of them! No one is picking up their phones! Don't you guys have a security system? Let me see the tapes. You've seen the news, there's a murderer out there! Again! I need to find my daughter!"

"I…I don't have the authorization…" began the clerk.

Before he'd had a chance to finish, however, Dojima heard footsteps running up behind him, and turned to see Minako rushing and stumbling through the door.

"Dojima-san?" she called frantically. "Dojima-san, where did you…oof!" Unable to see him, she smacked right into his chest, and then sank down the ground, biting her lip. "Ow…"

Dojima just stared at her for a moment in surprise. "Arisato?" he asked, reaching down to give her a hand up. "What the hell are you doing here? I thought I left you at your desk."

"You did…" agreed Minako. "Yu called me from your house. He said you were worried about Nanako. I came running to tell you; she's fine. Apparently Junpei saw her and Yosuke just a few minutes ago, at Daidara's store. They probably went tog et something to eat after that, or to do some shopping. There's really nothing for you to be worried about."

Something in the desperate, hasty assurances that Minako was giving him made Dojima suspicious.

"You came all the way over here just to tell me that?" he asked her. "Why? What's going on?"

"Nothing," breathed Minako. "I just didn't want you to think-!"

Dojima glared at her, although he knew that the effect of the expression was lost. "I'm warning you," he began. "If you're hiding something from me, I'm not going to sit back and just let you get away with it. Enough has gone on around here that I've been kept out of, but when it comes to Nanako…"

"I…I'm going to get the manager," squeaked the clerk, and he ran off.

Minako, apparently unperturbed by Dojima's ire, brushed herself off. "Sir, let's go back to the station," she cajoled him. "If you want, we can send out a patrol to look for her, but I'm really not concerned. After all, Yosuke and Teddie hang out with Nanako all the time. They love her, they'd never let anything happen to her. Yu isn't worried. There's nothing to panic about."

Then, before Minako had even finished speaking, Nanako fell out of the TV right next to where Dojima was standing.

"Oh," she said. "um…oops!"

Yosuke, who stumbled out right after her, mumbled, "I told you we should have waited a little longer…this is all your fault, Ted!"

"Me? How is it my fault! I was being bear-y patient!" insisted Teddie.

"Wha-?" stammered Dojima. "Nanako? Hanamura? Where did you come from all of a sudden?"

"Uh…" Yosuke look flustered for a moment. "Food court? I mean, the food court, sir! There's a back entrance, behind the…TV! Yeah. Employees only, you know."

Dojima just stared at them. Maybe, he thought, Yu had been right about Dojima needing to spend less time at work, and more time asleep. Did he really think he'd just seen his daughter and her two friends fall out of a television set? What kind of a nutcase was he turning into?

"I'm starting to hallucinate," he grumbled. "Great. Just great. Just what we need right now, a batshit police detective…"

Minako found his shoulder, and patted him comfortingly on it. "It's probably the caffeine withdrawal, sir," she told him sympathetically. "I've heard that can do really terrible things to people." Taking him gently by the arm, she began to lead him out of the electronics department. "Let's go back to the station," she insisted. "I'll make you a cup of coffee, we'll get some work done, and have a very productive day. How about that?"

"Don't talk down to me like I'm some crazy old coot," muttered Dojima, but the fight had gone out of him. "You're taking a vacation next week, right? Huh, maybe I should think about taking some time off, too…"

Just before they left the store, he turned around, and leveled his best attempt at a menacing stare at Nanako and Yosuke. "You," he said to Nanako. "Go home. Go help your cousin with his homework. And you," he added, pointing accusingly at Yosuke and Teddie, "stop dragging my daughter around on your crazy adventures. You're in college, aren't you? Shouldn't you be off getting into trouble and making bad choices? Anyway, you leave Nanako out of it. That's an order."

Was it his imagination, he wondered, or did Yosuke and Teddie look strangely relieved as they watched him walking away?

**Six - December 19**

**Author's Note: **Head's up, my beloved and beautiful readers! For those of you who have been reading both **Piecekeeping** and **Messiah**, I have been throwing in a little cue in each of the chapters to try and make sure that it's easy for you to figure out how the timelines of the two stories match up. There's a notable overlap in tonight's two updates, but if you're not reading carefully, you might miss it!

**Six – December 19**

The next day, Dad expressly forbid Nanako from going to Junes with the others.

"It's not right," he insisted, "for a kid your age to spend all of your time hanging out with a bunch of college guys."

Nanako had frowned at him. "You don't like it when I hang out with Big Bro? But…I thought you said you wanted us to be a real family."

That had, apparently, flustered Dad for a moment, which had made Nanako feel both guilty and gleeful in the same moment. "Of course we're a family," he'd said finally. "It's not your cousin that I'm worried about. It's his friends. They're much older than you, and they have different life experiences, and…"

"And you don't like them?" Nanako had asked.

Eventually Dad had given up. "I like them," he said. "I think they're great. Just…just do me a favor, and try to behave a little more like a lady. You're growing up, Nanako. It's time for you to start acting like it."

That had given Nanako plenty of food for thought. Was she not acting grown up enough? What would her mother have said, if she could have seen the people that Nanako was playing with? What did it mean to act like "a lady?" Didn't grown-up ladies hang out with men all the time? After all, Minako did it, and so did Yukiko, Chie, and Naoto and Rise…it just didn't make sense. If they were doing the things that grownups were supposed to do, then why were they too grown up for a growing girl to play with? For once, she was a little annoyed at Dad. He was being unreasonable.

In the end, though, she did what he asked her to do. She usually did. Dad was sometimes harsh, and sometimes didn't explain himself very well, but she loved him anyway. As Yu had helped her finally realized, he loved her very, very much. That was exactly the reason he was so…so much of a Dad sometimes.

She was, therefore, still at home that day when Yu finally slammed shut one of his textbooks, and took a deep, calming breath.

"I can't look at another equation," he said out loud. "Just reading the same things over and over again is starting to make me dizzy."

"Oh!" that didn't sound good "Do you want to take a rest?" asked Nanako.

Stretching his arms up over his head, Yu yawned. "Not exactly," he managed. "I think I need a change of pace Maybe I'll go to the library and do some research for one of my other courses. Do you want to come with me? You've been looking bored all day long. Maybe we can find something fun to read together."

"Yes!" Nanako agreed instantly. Finally, a chance to get out of the house…and besides, she still hadn't been able to show her cousin that she'd moved up again in her reading levels at school. Even her teacher said that Nanako was very advanced in reading for her age. Maybe she was even ready to have a look at the third grade books!

They set off together for the bus stop, and Nanako absolutely refused to ride on Yu's lap. "I'm too old for that," she insisted, when he offered. "I'm heavy. Your legs would hurt."

"No, they wouldn't," he said, and for some reason he sounded a little bit sad. Nanako wondered if maybe he, like Dad, was having a lot of feelings about the fact that she was "growing up."

Instead, she insisted on helping him push the chair, and Yu, for once, didn't argue the point. They took the bus all the way to the local library, a place that Nanako's teacher had only recently brought them to on a field trip. Nanako had a brand new, shiny library card that she was proud to show off at the front desk. Yu, she knew, didn't have an Inaba library card, but she promised that she'd let him take out a book with hers, if he was sure to return it before the end of vacation.

When he wheeled himself off to do some research in the adult sections, Nanako sat herself down at one of the library computers to try and find chapter books that might impress him. It was only after she'd completed a few dissatisfying searches on animals and policemen that a new thought struck her. What was it that Igor had been talking about, the other day? He'd been telling her and Yosuke all about what death meant. It hadn't been the same kind of death that she thought of when people asked her what had happened to her mother. It had been a different kind of death, the kind of death that really meant something else, like change, or new beginnings

"Tarot cards," Nanako mumbled to herself, as she typed, misspelled, and then retyped the words into the computer. That was right, wasn't it? She was pretty sure that was the word for what she was looking for. If not, she'd probably find out as soon as she opened the book.

Unexpectedly, as she was doing her search, one of her classmates walked by. He waved at her, and Nanako looked away from the screen long enough to smile back in response.

"Hey, Nana-chan!" he said. "Are you having a good vacation?"

"Yes, thank you, Haru-kun." she said. "My Big Bro came to visit for the whole break!"

"What are you doing at the library?" asked Haru. "I'm looking for books about robots."

Nanako puffed herself up importantly, as she told him, "I am doing research."

**That evening, at the Junes food court…**

It was already dark out when Yosuke finally finished up with work, and went outside to join his friends who were clustered around a table in the food court.

Kanji and Naoto, who had been responsible for that day's patrol, had apparently just come out of the Velvet Room, and were in the process of regaling the others with the tales of what they'd found there.

"There was this big old shadow," Kanji was saying enthusiastically, "sitting right outside the door to Minako's mind door thing, and it had these sharp-looking claws, and was getting ready to break through, so I got my persona out, and started going after it. It turned around took a swipe at Naoto, and she went down, so my persona swung at it and knocked it right off its feet, bam! Just like that."

"Wow, Naoto," said Rise, with a malicious little twinkle in her eye. "Did Kanji-kun really save you like that? That's awfully manly of him…"

Kanji blushed bright red, and Naoto looked extremely displeased. "I was just fine," she explained gloomily. "His help was unnecessary. I had the situation under control."

Partly to save Naoto's dignity, and partly because he was tired and didn't want to spend the whole night listening to the two of them bicker, Yosuke sat down in a chair and addressed the group. "Hey, guys," he said, "Come on, we're supposed to be having a meeting, not messing around."

"Aww, Yosuke," whined Rise. "It's just a little fun…how come you're so serious lately? You need to loosen up. College made you all mean."

Yosuke shook his head impatiently. "We don't have time to 'loosen up,'" he insisted. "We're on a mission here. I thought we all agreed that we were trying to end the Velvet Room problem for good."

"It doesn't really work like that," murmured Yukiko. "We can't just make it go away by getting serious about it. We need some ideas, something to go on."

"Yeah," agreed Chie glumly. "At this rate, we're just gonna run ourselves into the ground and burn out…"

"Okay," agreed Yosuke, "then let's come up with some ideas. What do we know?"

He looked around at the group, but no one seemed eager to volunteer.

"Um…we know that there are shadows suddenly appearing inside Yu and Minako's brains," said Chie eventually. "That's…well, that's bad."

"Right," agreed Yosuke. "What else?"

"The inner sanctums of Yu-kun and Minako-chan's minds are protected by doors that serve as 'thresholds,'" continued Naoto, "but which are obviously not impervious to the shadows. If we are able to permanently seal off the doors, then the minds themselves will remain protected until and unless the seal is breached. Is that about right?"

"That's…yeah, that's pretty much it." Yosuke was sort of disappointed. Somehow, he had hoped that hearing it all out loud would spark a moment of genius in him, and would suddenly allow him to come up with the plan that would be brilliant and clever enough to solve the whole problem and save the day. That, obviously, wasn't going to happen.

"I think we need help," sighed Rise. "This is just too much. I don't even know where to start thinking about it…"

She had taken the words right out of his mouth. Yosuke looked around at a bunch of dejected faces. Things hadn't ever seemed quite this bleak before, not even when they'd been faced with the series of murders that had led them to discover their persona ability in the first place.

"Help?" asked Junpei. "Yeah…yeah, that's not a bad idea."

Yosuke blinked. He hadn't really taken much notice of Junpei, whom he still didn't really consider a part of the team, even if he was making the extra effort for Minako's sake.

"We had lots of help the first time, right?" Junpei continued. "I mean, the whole gang was here! All the guys from SEES, like Akihiko-san, and Mitsuru-san, and Fuuka…Akihiko-san and Mitsuru-san are part of this thing now, some organization run by Mitsuru's family that deals with fighting shadows. I bet they'd come if we asked them. Of course they would. Minako's one of us…I mean, one of them."

"I would enjoy the opportunity to speak with Ken-kun again," murmured Naoto thoughtfully. "A very interesting boy…very intelligent for his age. He really might be an asset."

"Mitsuru-san's fighting the shadows too?" asked Yukiko. "She did seem like the type who wouldn't be willing to let things go so easily…"

Yosuke tried not to jump at Junpei's idea. After all, just bringing in more people wasn't going to solve the problem. It wasn't a manpower issue. Didn't any of them remember what Igor had said? The way to seal off the doors was similar to the way Minako and Junpei had originally sealed Nyx. That meant that someone might have to die. Did they really want to get more people involved who might get hurt in the process?

"Hey, guys," he began.

Nobody, unfortunately, seemed to be listening.

"Minako and I are going to Iwatodai in a couple of days," Junpei was saying. "We're taking a vacation. When we get there, I'll ask the guys if they want to come back with us! We can all celebrate the Christmas holidays together! How about it, huh? Am I good at this thinking game, or what?"

Murmurs of agreement and enthusiasm rippled around the table. Everyone seemed to be in favor. Junpei beamed.

As the party began to break up for the evening, and everyone started off in their separate directions, Yosuke caught up with Junpei and pulled him aside.

"What about keeping Minako out of this?" he asked, accusingly. "I thought you wanted to try to stay away from stuff that might bring back bad memories, stuff that might make all of this too much like what happened before."

Junpei gave Yosuke a surly little shrug. "Yeah, but I…I mean, she could die, man. It's complicated."

"You're telling me," muttered Yosuke.

"Anyway," finished Junpei, "All I'm doing is throwing some ideas around. You're the leader, right? So, you figure it out. All you do is sit around saying the same things and looking pissed off all the time. If you can't take the heat, then say something already, before someone gets hurt."

"Something," mumbled Yosuke, under his breath.

"Huh?" asked Junpei/. "What did you say?"

Yosuke shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "I didn't say anything."

**Seven - December 20**

**Author's Note: **Both recent story updates have Yu in them! Yay for Yu! I've missed him.

And now, Nanako teaches us some important things about the very nature of persona. This is essentially the end of the first part of the story, the multi-chapter prologue, if you will. Sorry that it's been a little bit slow going, I think I'm spending more time on character development in this one than I have previously. I like character development…I think we might actually need some more of it.

Stay tuned for more fun either this evening or tomorrow morning…I've got a multi-hour metro ride today, so I'll probably come home from rehearsal with something to share with you.

**Seven – December 20**

"Big Bro?" asked Nanako. "Will you help me with something?"

Yu looked up from where he was sitting in front of the couch, having temporarily abandoned his homework in favor of watching a news program. "With what?" he asked.

Nanako hesitantly presented the book she'd picked up at the library the day before. She'd checked it out quickly before he'd returned from his research, and had been careful not to show it to him up until now. For some reason, she felt like he might not be happy about her doing her own special research.

Still, when she'd gotten home and opened "The Magic of Tarot," even Nanako had been forced to admit that she was out of her league. This book was not at a first grade reading level. It was not at a third grade reading level. As far as she could tell, it wasn't at any reading level that she had ever seen. Although there were big, beautiful pictures on every page, which had attracted her to the book in the first place, some of the words had so many letters that just spending time sounding them out made her want to take a nap.

"Um, can you read with me for a bit?" she asked. "I was trying to read it by myself, but some of these pages are kind of hard…"

Yu took the book that she handed to him, and glanced at the cover. She saw him raise his eyebrows in surprise as he read the title. "The Magic of Tarot," he murmured. "So, that's what you were looking for at the library."

Nanako bit her lip. "Are you mad?" she asked.

"What? No, of course I'm not mad." Yu shook his head quickly. "It makes sense that you'd want to know more about this."

"My teacher says, "Nanako told him, "that we're learning how to read so that we can use books to help teach ourselves how to learn."

"Yeah," said Yu, nodding. "That…isn't exactly how I'd put it for a first grader, but I think it sounds about right."

Nanako crawled up near to him on the couch, and they opened the book together. "I want to read about Icarus," she said. "Can we find him?"

Yu began turning the pages. "Icarus won't be in here," he told her, "but we can find what kind of persona he is. Icarus is a fool, right? So, let's look for the 'Fool' arcana…"

Nanako recognized the word "Fool" only a few pages into the text. She put her finger on it to stop Yu turning the pages. There was a picture on the page as well, although it was of a card that Nanak o had never seen, with a confused-looking dancing man wearing a very silly hat. "What does this part say?" she asked.

"The Fool," read Yu carefully, "has no number, or is listed as holding the number zero."

Nanako wrinkled her nose. "Zero? It's not nice to call someone a 'zero.' There's a boy at school that does that on the playground when he doesn't get picked first for soccer. I asked my teacher what it meant, and she said that it was like calling someone a 'loser.'"

"Shh," said Yu. "If you're going to listen, then you can't talk at the same time."

Nanako went quiet, slightly embarrassed.

"The Fool," read Yu again, "has no number, or is listed as the number zero. Many people assume the fool to be the hero of the story told by the cards of the major arcana. The other arcana dictate what is known as the "Fool's journey," or the path that he or she takes through life. So," he said, looking away from the page for a moment, "Saying that the fool represents the number zero just means that the fool is learning and growing, and becoming a person throughout the story. The fool hasn't learned anything yet at the beginning. The journey teaches him. Does that make sense?"

Nanako nodded silently.

Yu smiled. "You can talk now," he told her. "I'm finished reading for the moment."

"Oh," said Nanako. "Yes, I think I understand. Um, can we look at another page? I want to see the…" She had to think for a moment before she remembered which card she wanted. "Oh, I want to see the 'justice' one."

Yu dutifully turned the pages until he found a page featuring a picture of a person with a crown, maybe a king, sitting on a throne. "The 'Justice' arcana," read Yu, "represents intelligence, responsibility, rationalization and clear thinking."

"I have two," Nanako reminded him. "One looks like an angel, and the other is…um, well she's sort of an angel without wings!"

Yu smiled at her. "So are you," he said. "Anything else?"

"Yes," said Nanako, taking a deep breath. "I want to find the page about the 'death' card."

She had expected Yu to refuse, or to ask questions. Instead, he just paused for a moment, frowned, and then began turning the pages again without saying a word. That made Nanako a bit uncomfortable. She might have felt better if he'd asked. Maybe, she thought, Yosuke had already told him about the Thanatos card. Then again, she didn't think that was something that Yosuke would do…

The picture on the page about death was a little bit frightening. It looked like a group of people, all standing around while they watched an evil-looking man with a skull where his head should be threatening someone in shining yellow clothes.

"Death," read Yu. "The interpretation of this card is usually somewhat vague or uncertain. It can mean sadness, loss, and the end of life, or can mean change, transformation, or regeneration. Death often marks the ending of one thing, and the subsequent beginning of another."

"What does 'subsequent' mean?" asked Nanako.

"It means 'something that happens after something else,'" murmured Yu absently. "Does that scare you?"

Nanako was puzzled. "Does what scare me? Something happening after something else?"

"No," insisted Yu, "the idea of death."

"Not really," said Nanako honestly. "Should I be scared?"

Closing the book, Yu wrapped an arm around Nanako's shoulders. "No," he assured her. "Of course not. After all, I would never let anything happen to you."

As Nanako snuggled against her cousin's shoulder, the phone rang.

"One sec," said Yu, wheeling himself across the room. "Let me get that. Then we can read something else, just for fun."

While Yu talked on the phone, Nanako sat on the couch and thought hard about what he had said. The fool card was supposed to be a hero. Maybe Icarus was her hero, the one who saved everybody. After all, he'd saved them in the Velvet Room when his wings caught on fire. He'd protected all of them! That was what a hero was supposed to do, wasn't it? He was going to go on a journey. Would he go far away from her? She didn't like the sound of that. He couldn't protect her or her friends anymore if he went too far away. Journeys, too, could be dangerous.

The "Justice" card was different, though. She definitely liked the idea of "responsibility" and "clear thinking." Did that mean that those cards were really smart? Dad was always talking about her growing up to smart and "responsible," so those cards seemed like very good ones to have.

There was more, though, to this than just being smart. She knew that. If she was going to protect her Big Bro, and all the rest of her friends, she needed to be smart and strong, too.

"Big Bro?" she asked, as Yu hung up the phone and came back to the sofa. "How did you get so strong?"

Yu looked thoughtful. "You mean, how did my personas get so strong?"

That wasn't exactly what Nanako had meant, but she decided not to correct him.

"It's all about the people you connect with," said Yu. "Personas get stronger through social bonds…let's see, how can I put this." He paused for a moment, and then added, "The more people you know, and the closer friends that you make, the stronger your personas become. Your best friends make for your strongest personas."

"Oh!' Nanako was delighted. That didn't sound difficult at all. In fact, it sounded like fun. She loved making new friends.

"Sometimes, though," cautioned Yu, more sternly than usual, "You have to learn things about people that you'd rather not know. Sometimes people can surprise you."

That, unfortunately, made less sense. Why would Nanako not want to know things about her closest friends? After all, best friends told each other everything. That was what it meant to be a best friend. There was no reason why she wouldn't want to know about the things her best friends wanted to tell her.

Yu looked as though he had more to say, but at that moment, the doorbell rang. Nanako ran over to open it, revealing Chie and Yukiko, both in their running clothes. Chie grinned when she saw Nanako.

"Well?" she asked. "Ready for our first workout session of the winter break, Nanako-chan?"

"Yay!' Nanako was thrilled. "Is Yukiko coming too?"

Yukiko looked tired, but she smiled. "It…does seem that way," she admitted. "I'm afraid that I'm not in the same shape that Chie is, but…"

Chie buffeted Yukiko playfully on the shoulder. "Then we'd better start working harder so that we can get you there! Come on! I bet it'll help you get all the college boys. After all, guys love a girl who can challenge them!"

Yukiko frowned. "I…don't know where you're getting this stuff," She admitted. Are you sure about that?"

Before leaving, Nanako turned around to wave at Yu. "I'm going to train with Chie and Yukiko," she told him, somewhat unnecessarily.

Yu just nodded. "Have fun," he told her.

A twinge of guilt crept across Nanako's mind, as she remembered that Dad had told her not to go out and play all day with the older kids. "Um," she murmured, "if Dad calls…"

Yu shook his head. "I'll tell him you went out with a friend," he assured her. "That's not a lie, is it?"

Nanako was relieved. "Nope!" She said. "Okay! Thanks! Bye!"

As she closed the door behind her, Nanako looked up at the two older girls, remembering what Yu had told her about helping her persona get stronger. She had to make better friends, he'd said. Well, maybe this was a good place to start.

"Ready?" asked Chie.

Nanako struck her toughest, most heroic pose. "Ready!"

**Meanwhile, at the police station…**

Dojima watched Minako hang up the phone.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

"Oh." Minako was startled. Apparently she hadn't expected him to be listening in. "Nothing, sir. Just a personal call."

"Yeah, well," he muttered, "you can make those on your own time."

They sat for a few moments in silence, before he spoke again. "That was my nephew on the phone, wasn't it?"

"Yes," murmured Minako. "Yu and are going to hang out after work."

Dojima frowned. "You two hang out a lot these days, don't you?"

Minako sighed. "Dojima-san," she said carefully, "we have been through this before. Many times before, actually. You don't want to know the answers to these questions. It wouldn't help you sleep any better at night."

"Yeah, well," growled Dojima, "I don't sleep too well as it is. Couldn't make much a difference. I'm tired of everyone tiptoeing around me all the time. It's not like I don't notice. It was different when it was just you and the rest of them…you're almost adults. You can make your own choices. Now, though, you've got Nanako involved. Don't lie to me, Arisato…I know you do."

Minako wisely did not say anything. Dojima knew he had her in an uncomfortable position, which was exactly where he wanted her. Of all of them, Minako was the youngest, and so he figured she probably had the least experience with all of this. She'd have to be the easiest to break. Besides, Dojima was her boss. She was supposed to answer his questions.

"Where did Hanamura and Nanako come from, the other day?" he pressed her. "When we found them in the electronics department at Junes. What were they up to?"

"They fell out of the TV," said Minako tiredly.

Dojima glowered at her. "Don't give me that," he snapped. "I want answers. Real answers. This is my daughter we're talking about here. I need to know that she's not in any danger."

Unexpectedly, Minako snapped. "I can't give you that," she insisted, much more harshly than he'd heard her speak before. After a deep breath, and a moment's pause to collect herself, she added, more sedately, "Nothing I can say is going to make you feel any safer. I'm not going to convince you that everything is going to be okay, because I can't."

There was something hollow and strained in Minako's voice that sent a shudder down Dojima's spine. Suddenly, she didn't look so young anymore. She looked strangely old and exhausted.

"Please, Dojima-san," she begged him. "Let it go. For everyone's sake."

Now, though, there was no way Dojima could let it go. Not after seeing that. He turned back to his desk, and let Minako go back to hers, but even the murder case he was supposed to be focused on wasn't holding much power over his imagination anymore.

Enough was enough. This couldn't go on. He was going to find out what was really happening here, no matter who he had to go through to do it.

**Eight - December 21 and 22**

**Author's Note: **Unfortunately, I have severely wounded my foot. Apparently, it may take more than one doctor and several days to sort this out, so in the meantime, I will be spending a lot of time lying in bed with my foot elevated.

While this will make it difficult to get some important things done, it does give me plenty of chance to write.

I have no idea how I am going to get through the work day tomorrow without being allowed to use my foot, though…

In any case, I'm feeling a little grumpy and overtaxed, today, so here's some Dojima!

**Eight – December 21/22**

Two days ago, Dojima had resolved that, no matter what the obstacles he might face, he would find out the truth behind the mysterious crap that his nephew and now his daughter were involved with. All day on the 21rst, he had stewed and brooded about different ways that he might have them tailed, or talk them into corners to either force or coerce them into telling him what was really going on.

Then, on the 22nd, the unthinkable happened.

Arisato didn't come into work.

The phone on his desk had not stopped ringing the entire morning. The first couple of times that it had happened, he'd ignored it, assuming that someone else was going to pick it up. When it kept ringing, and he'd eventually been provoked into answering it, he'd discovered that there was almost always some local resident on the other end of the line, insisting that they just had to tell him about the space alien they'd just sighted in their backyard, or the fact that they were convinced that their supposedly law-abiding spouse of five or six years was actually committing horrible crimes, ranging from the more mundane adultery, to the more fantastic and less believable axe murders.

"What the hell is wrong with these people?" he asked of no one in particular, after he'd hung up from his fourth insane "tip" call of the morning. "This is a police station we're running here, not a hotline for nutjobs!

Then, various patrol officers and other employees of the station had begun approaching the desk to ask questions. Where was that document he'd had to sign off on the day before? He had no idea he'd even signed it. Had he approved the leave that they'd asked for, or the change of patrol that they'd requested three weeks before? He couldn't even remember their names, let alone what days they were supposed to be on or off shift.

Throughout it all, Dojima could not shake that horribly, gut-wrenchingly awake feeling that came only when someone had forgotten to get him a cup of coffee.

There was only so much of this that he could take. He lasted about three hours in stoic, tortured silence until finally, as the caffeine-deprivation shakes began to set in, he stood up from his desk and bellowed, "Where the hell is Arisato?"

Several people looked up in alarm, and then they all, as one body, glanced over at the one unfortunate rookie who had been caught a little bit too close for comfort to Dojima's desk.

"Uh," said the rookie, blushing under the expectant stares of most of the rest of the station employees, "Sir, I think Miss Minako is on vacation."

"I never authorized any vacation," growled Dojima.

The rookie shook his head miserably. "Actually, sir, um, you did. We…we were all there. You, um, you told her to go and have a good Christmas, sir."

Dojima glowered balefully down at his empty coffee mug. He needed to handle this situation carefully. First, he would make a new cup of coffee. Then, he would find someone to yell at. Then, he would figure out who he could rope into answering all of these goddamn phone calls.

For the first time in longer than he cared to remember, Dojima wondered where Adachi was when he needed him.

Taking a deep breath, he did his best to relax. Arisato was always telling him that he'd hurt himself if he didn't stop bellowing at everyone and blowing a fuse every time something went wrong. She was, he had to admit, probably right. Much as he hated to think too hard about, it he wasn't as young as he'd once been. Thinking about all those kids getting themselves into more and more trouble all the time certainly wasn't helping him in that department.

Back in his day, he was sure, children respected their elders. Okay, maybe not all the time. Maybe even he, once or twice, had gotten into a few fights with his father, and even his mother. In fact, he and Chisato had gotten married against the wishes of her mother and father, who were, he supposed, technically also his elders. Still, that was and would remain beside the point. The point was that children did know what was good for them, and it was both his moral duty and his duty as a detective to get to the bottom of this.

The surveillance photos of the Junes electronics department had been delivered to his desk an hour or so before, just as he'd requested. Junes, which was the most popular spot for local attempted robberies, did have pretty decent security equipment, and the photos gave him a good look at everyone and everything that had come in and out of the electronics department in the past week. There was Yu, in his chair, and that weird kid Teddie, who always seemed to be dressed as the Junes mascot, even when he wasn't working. There was Hanamura, Satonaka, the Amagi girl…Dojima went through the list of his nephew's closest friends in his head, as he leafed through photos of each of them coming in and out of the electronics department. There were even a few photos of Yu and Minako, just sitting and talking in front of one of the big TVs.

There was nothing in the photos that was even a little bit out of the ordinary. Well, okay, a bunch of teenagers spending all of their free time at the local department store was pretty ordinary, too. Honestly, when he tried to think of anything that he could use to give himself grounds for his suspicions, there wasn't anything he could talk about in front of the rest of the force. Nobody was going to believe that Yu had suddenly come back to life. Nobody was going to believe that Yu's inability to walk, which the doctors claimed had no basis in medical fact, came from something that had happened to him during his re-animation. Dojima himself didn't believe all that crap that even Adachi had tried to feed him, about jumping into TVs and killing people by forcing them to face some weird monster creatures that looked just like they did. He had nothing based in fact at all, actually, to go on. There were only his suspicions, which had been building and mounting for far, far too long.

Then, just as he was about to give up on the photographs and go back to his regularly scheduled program of brooding, grumbling, and coffee, Dojima saw something in one of the photos that made his jaw drop.

"Wha-? But, that's impossible," he muttered to himself, peering more closely into the image in front of him. "That' can't be right."

Getting to his feet, he found his coat, and shoved one arm into it, stalking around his desk and heading for the door.

"I'll be back later," he told the room at large.

Even as he left the building, the phone began to ring again. Unconsciously, he started to walk a little faster.

**Meanwhile, at the Junes food court…**

Nanako was ready. She had spent time reading up on the different kinds of persona in her new "Magic of Tarot" book, and she now had questions she wanted to ask Igor. Something interesting had occurred to her while she and Yu were reading. Once, Igor had showed her something that he called "fusion." He'd taken her Icarus, and then had shown her how Icarus and Angel, together, could make a new persona, who became her Dawn. If Icarus and Angel could make Dawn, what could Dawn and this one called Thanatos make?

She was particularly interested in finding out about that because of something the book had said. Dawn was a "justice" card, or a card that could mean things like "rebirth." Thanatos was a "death" card, and rebirth was…well, the opposite of death, wasn't it? If she was honest with herself, she did have to admit that she'd had to ask Yu about the word "rebirth," to make sure that she had it right. What would happen if Thanatos and Dawn made a persona together? What would that do? Could she have death and rebirth at the same time?

With those thoughts at the forefront of her mind, Nanako was just itching to get back into the Velvet Room.

Yosuke, who was supposed to on patrol with her today, looked a lot less happy about it.

"Yosuke?" she asked, as they got up from the table and walked into the electronics department together, "What's wrong? You look, um…" The word "tired," thought Nanako, didn't quite describe the way Yosuke looked. She didn't actually know a good word for it.

"What?" asked Yosuke distractedly. "Oh, yeah, sorry. I'm okay. Haven't…been getting much sleep. And this is supposed to be winter break!" He laughed, but it didn't sound like a real laugh. It sounded just as tired, thought Nanako, as the rest of him did.

"Well, okay." Nanako figured it might be one of those "grownup things" that Dad always talked about when she caught him sitting up late on the sofa, staring at the floor, or at nothing at all. It was probably better to leave him alone about it. She reached out and put her hand through the TV, and was just about to climb inside when she heard a strangled sort of half-gasp, half-grunt from behind her.

That was a very familiar sound. Nanako spun instantly around. "Oh," she murmured, her heart sinking. "Um…hi, Dad!"

Dad was standing behind her with his mouth hanging open, looking as though he wanted to say something. Nanako, ever the dutiful daughter, waited patiently for him to choose the right words.

"No way," muttered Yosuke. "Not now…dude, what are we gonna-?"

"Nanako," began Dojima slowly. "What…how…why do you have your hand in that TV?"

"Um…" Nanako blinked. "Because I have to go inside, to help Yosuke protect Minako and Yu from the bad shadows in their brains? I promise, I didn't break it! It's still good, see?" To demonstrate, she pulled her hand back out of the TV again.

Dad made a strange noise that sounded like a combination of "Ugh," and "Erk."

"We can't make a scene here," Yosuke was saying. "What if other people get curious? Somebody's gonna see us. Jeez…Dojima-san, sir, I am really, really, unbelievably sorry about this."

"What are you-?" began Dad.

Before he had time to finish the sentence, however, Yosuke ran around behind him, grabbed him by both arms, and hauled him forward into the TV. The last thing Nanako heard Dad say, before he and Yosuke both disappeared into the screen, was, "Hey! Hanamura! Get your hands off-!"

Then, they were both gone, leaving Nanako still staring dumbfounded at the TV. As quickly as she could, she hurried to jump through and join them.

After the fuzzy feeling of going through the screen finally stopped spinning her around, Nanako looked up and saw that Dad was still sitting on the floor of the TV world, just staring around him in silent confusion. Yosuke was standing over his shoulder, waving his hands helplessly in the air.

"This," she hissed at him, "was not a very good idea!"

"Well?" asked Yosuke, "I panicked, okay? What was I supposed to do? It was too late, he'd already seen you!"

"You should have let me handle it!" insisted Nanako, in the voice she reserved for the silliest and most difficult boys on the playground. "He's _my_ Dad!"

"N-Nanako," mumbled Dojima. "Nanako? Where…where are we? Are you okay?"

Yosuke sighed heavily. "Let's just get him back out of here, fast, before the shadows come after him, okay? Sometimes, when people come into the TV world for the first time, they meet their shadow self here, and I don't even want to think about what Dojima-san's shadow self would be like…oh, man." Pausing for a moment, Yosuke frowned, then added, "Hey, you never faced your shadow self, did you, Nanako-chan? I wonder why…"

Nanako didn't think that was very important right now. She also wasn't totally sure what Yosuke was talking about, but it sounded bad. If big, bad shadows were going to come after her Dad, then they had to do something about it right now.

"Let's take him into the Velvet Room!" she said. "Igor doesn't let any shadows in there! Not into the first part, anyway. That's a special place. It's safe."

"No," said Yosuke. "We can't do that! People without personas can't go in there, remember? Just like Minako and Yu. Besides, even if we did get him in there, then he'd see Adach-!"

Yosuke stopped. He and Nanako both took a nervous look at Dad.

"Come on," sighed Yosuke. "Let's just…here, you get his other arm."

**Nine - December 22**

**Author's Note: **I was totally ready to write this chapter, and then I read **Miss Hanamura**'s newest offering and now I am, like, staring at the blank page just wishing I could make words do the magical things that she can make words do.

Go read it. Again, you can go do that right now. This chapter isn't going anywhere, and it'll be here when you get back, although after reading her stuff, you may just want to curl up in an introspective corner for a few minutes instead…

Anyway, here's some more Dojima. Just a quick heads up, there is going to be some significant back-and-forth between **Piecekeeping** and **Messiah** over the next couple of days. If you're having fun reading this one, it might be worth reading the other one just to make sure you get the full story of what's going on with Minako while these guys are sorting stuff out on their end…

**Nine – December 22**

Dojima did not feel well. The dizzy, fuzzy, nauseating feeling that had had taken a hold on him ever since his inexplicable trip into the TV was not sitting well inside him, and all he kept thinking was that he was really, really getting too old for this sort of thing.

"Tell me again," he mumbled. "Slowly, this time. From the beginning."

Hanamura, who was sitting at a Junes food court table just opposite him, sighed wearily.  
"Dojima-san, sir,"he said, sounding as patient at Dojima supposed he could do under the circumstances, "It isn't gonna make any more sense the third time, okay? I can't explain what's happening here. We all just sort of…accept it. After a while, you have to. You just get used to it. There's a lot of stuff about the TV world that even we don't know about."

"So," repeated Dojima, for what he absently agreed was probably the third or fourth time, "You're telling me that there's another world, a world inside the TV screen."

"Yeah," muttered Hanamura.

"And this world," continued Dojima carefully, "is some kind of…other reality, where people turn into shadowy monsters."

This time, Hanamura shook his head. "People don't turn into anything," he corrected him. "People are people., It's just that once you go in there, sometimes your soul gets away from you and shows you the monster that you could be if you were, um…wait, let me try again."

Dojima just frowned. "No," he said. "No, I don't…its ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. You Maybe you did some kind of trick, some new fangled teenage prank. I can't believe that-!"

Suddenly, Dojima heard the sounds of wheels against the pavement, and then Yu pulled himself around the corner and into the food court.

"Thank god you're here!" exclaimed Hanamura. "Okay, wait, before you get angry, I gotta tell you, there weren't that many other options. It was too late. He'd already seen us, and I figured that-!"

"It's fine," insisted Yu. "I knew that something like this had to happen, sooner or later. After everything that's happened lately, we can't expect this to stay a secret forever."

Hanamura just stared at him for a moment. "Wha-?" he asked. "You did? We can't? But how am I supposed to-!"

"Yosuke," interrupted Yu. "I'll take care of this. I should have done it a long time ago. Go ahead and take Nanako on patrol. We'll be here when you get back. Keep an eye on her for us, okay?"

"O-okay," agreed Hanamura hesitantly. "Are you sure you don't want me to stick around? You know, um, moral support?"

"Go," insisted Yu. "We're both going to be fine." He looked at Dojima as he said that last bit, and Dojima got the strange, but not entirely unfamiliar sense that this eighteen year old kid might be more of a mature adult than half the guys on the force would ever turn out to be. Once upon a time, that had been a comforting thought, especially since Dojima had been leaving Nanako alone with Yu so often. At the moment, though, it was frankly creepy.

With obvious reluctance, Hanamura and Nanako headed off back into the electronics department.

"Nanako?" called out Dojima. "Nanako! Where are you going?"

"It's okay, Dad!" she promised him, giving him a reassuring little wave. "I'll be back soon!"

Then they were gone, and Dojima was still sitting at the table, feeling dazed, and aware that he should be up and running for the store, instead of letting Nanako go off with Hanamura after what he'd just seen. For some reason, though, his legs didn't seem to be following orders. His head was spinning. The nausea was getting worse. He felt useless, old, and suddenly uncertain of all the things that he thought he'd been sure of only moments before.

"Uncle Dojima?" asked Yu quietly. "How are you feeling?"

"Ugh," mumbled Dojima. "I don't know. Where's Nanako going?"

"Do you really want to know?" asked Yu.

Dojima nodded. "Of course I want to know. She's my daughter. It's my responsibility to make sure that nothing bad happens to her. Yours too, if you'd only-!"

"She's going into a monster-infested manifestation of the inside her mind, or maybe my mind, or Minako's mind, or possibly all three. It's kind of unclear. While she's there, she and Yosuke will probably use the magical parts of their re-awakened souls, called 'personas' to defeat some shadow creatures that are trying, for lack of a better way of describing it, to eat mine and Minako's brains."

Dojima sat very still for a minute. There were a myriad number of questions that he could potentially ask at this moment, but he could only ask one of them at a time. It took him a moment to let one question, the one important question, separate from the jumble that his brain had just become.

"Will she be all right?" he asked finally. "Will Hanamura keep an eye on her? Does he know what he's doing?"

"Yes," said Yu simply. "What else do you want to know?"

Dojima knew that Yu's confident assurance should have relaxed him a little bit. It was at that moment, however, that he remembered the pained, tired look on Minako's face the day before she'd left on vacation, when she'd told that she couldn't give him any real assurance that Nanako and everyone else was really going to be all right.

"I have to go back in there," he said. "I need to be with Nanako. If there are…monsters inside there, then she'll need her father."

Yu just shrugged. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I can't take you back there. I can't go in there myself, anymore. Not without help anyway."

Dojima blinked. "Why?" he asked. That didn't make a lot of sense. After all, it had been Yu who had first told him about the TV World, in an excuse that he'd made some time ago, during his initial stay in Inaba. Back then, Dojima had, of course, assumed that it was some kind of a story, and not a particularly clever or creative one at that. Worlds inside the TV? Mysterious monsters? What kind of an idiotic excuse was that? He'd been disappointed in his nephew's ingenuity.

Now, of course, he felt like he was the idiot, which wasn't a feeling he had ever particularly enjoyed.

Yu, Dojima realized, was still talking. He tried to tune his thoughts back in from their distracted wanderings down memory lane.

"I can't go in anymore," Yu was saying, "and neither can Minako. When we got hurt, almost a year ago, it was because we gave up a part of ourselves inside the TV world. That part of ourselves, that's the part that let us get inside there in the first place. Without it, we can't find our way in. We need someone else to pull or push us through to break the barrier, just like you needed Yosuke or Nanako to help you get in. I…can only assume that it was Yosuke."

Something about that string of nonsensical items at least struck a chord with Dojima. He latched on to the one thing in Yu's monologue that he at least partially understood. "You got hurt," he repeated."You mean, when your legs got injured? That had something to do with all of this?"

Yu nodded. "Except," he said, "that it wasn't my legs. It's my mind that's been injured."

"The doctors say there's nothing wrong with your brain," Dojima reminded him mechanically. "You're not paralyzed. There's no neurological damage, no spinal damage." What he didn't say was that the doctors had informed him that Yu was probably making it up. When they'd told him that, he'd really begun to wonder about that injury, and how it had come about. Yu was a kid, and kids did a lot of stupid things, but Yu was also more of a man than Dojima felt he himself was sometimes, and he didn't believe for a moment that Yu would make something like this up, for attention or for any other reason. There was something seriously wrong, something the doctors couldn't find. Maybe that realization spawned the moment that had really led Dojima to wanting, no, needing to find out the truth about what had been going on in his nephew's life.

"The part of me that got injured is a part that the doctor's can't see on an X-Ray, or a brain scan," Yu continued. "I actually have a theory about what happened. I don't know for sure, but…it's an idea. Do you want to hear it?"

What Dojima really wanted to was to try going back to this morning, and waking up again in a world where everything made sense." Yeah," he said. "Sure."

"Okay," said Yu. Something about the level, rational tones of his voice was both infuriating and relaxing at the same time. "Minako and I gave up part of each of our souls to stave off some big calamity. That part, even I don't completely understand. When we did it, though, we lost our personas, and we got hurt, too. Minako went blind, and I can't move my legs. It seemed random at first, but…the more I think about it, the more I start to figure that it isn't really like that at all. Minako's proud of her ability to see people for who and what they really are. I'm good at getting things done, making everyone's choices, taking action. When her soul got damaged, she started to doubt her abilities more, and so she lost her sight. When mine got damaged, I started to doubt, and I lost my legs. That part of the soul, the one that we don't have any more, it was what kept all the bad things in our heads away. Now that we don't have it, all the bad things are getting back in, and they're cutting off the people we used to be. That's…that's what I think, anyway. In my head it makes sense, but…"

To his own surprise, Dojima let out a bark of laughter. "It makes sense? None of this makes any sense. Not a damn bit of any of it." The more Yu talked, the more frustrated Dojima could feel himself getting. There was no place he could access this, no one spark of light that would let him into the secret. How could he make sense of something that had no basis in what, up until this moment, he had considered reality?

"I'm sorry it had to happen this way," murmured Yu. "There has to have been a better way to break it to you, but…for so long, you just refused to listen to anything we had to say about it. Even Adachi-!"

"Adachi," muttered Dojima. Suddenly, the thing that had been scratching and clawing at the back of his bemused psyche finally got a grip. It wasn't just Yu and Hanamura who had told him all of this stuff before. In Adachi's final confession, during the solution of that first Inaba murder case, he'd tried to explain that he'd been guided to all of this by some sort of evil entity in some kind of TV universe, who had given him powers he didn't know how to control, and had turned him in the direction that he'd taken. Dojima had been more furious than he thought he could have managed, at the time. After everything that had happened, all they'd been through together and all the tormenting betrayals, it seemed that even then Adachi couldn't be bothered to tell him the truth.

Of course, he had told him the truth. Maybe it was the only genuinely honest thing that murdering bastard had ever done in his life, but…somehow, it sank a knife into Dojima. In the end, Adachi had tried to be an honest man, even for just a moment's conversation, and Dojima hadn't given him even that. Now, of course, the guy was dead, and according to Arisato, he'd died trying to save Yu and Nanako's lives. Did that make up for everything that had happened? No, thought Dojima. It couldn't even come close. Still, this suddenly new and alarming take on things left him uncomfortable and even angrier at someone, although he wasn't sure if that someone was Adachi or himself.

"Uncle Dojima," said Yu. "I know this is a lot to take in."

Dojima snorted. "Yeah," he growled.

**Ten - December 22 and 23**

**Author's Note: **Today, I should really spend most of the day doing homework and Hamlet stuff, but I think I got up just early enough to do another **Piecekeeping** update before it's time to hit the books.

We're gearing up for the big Christmas party! Finally, all the characters back in the same room again!

…

*tries not to cry* So many characters…

**Ten – December 22/23**

When Nanako and Yosuke came back out of the TV, Dad and Yu were just sitting there, not saying anything. Dad had that look on his face that Nanako recognized. It was the only one of his looks that she was really afraid of. He was thinking, thinking very hard, and the answers that he was getting were not making him very happy.

Yosuke and Yu said a few quiet things to each other that Nanako didn't understand. Then Yosuke left, very fast, and Yu, Nanako, and Dad went home together in silence.

Back at the house, Nanako was amazed by the way that Yu seemed to be acting like nothing was wrong. He went into the kitchen and started making something for all of them to eat for lunch. She could hear him wheeling and shuffling around, taking things off of shelves and putting them on to counters. Normally, she would have gone in to help, since Yu's chair sometimes made it hard for him to get around in their small kitchen.

Today, though, Nanako knew that Yu had given her a very special task. Maybe he hadn't said anything out loud, but when he'd left her alone with Dad, that meant that he trusted her to make sure that Dad's head didn't explode.

"Um," she said. That seemed to be as far as she could get. What was she supposed to easy? The black look on Dad's face didn't give her any insight into what he was thinking about.

"It's all over now," he muttered. "This is the end of it. I forbid you to go back into that TV place, Nanako. Do you understand me?"

Nanako had been expecting this. She'd actually been expecting it for a very long time. Dad was very good at telling her not to do things. He did it a lot. Usually, she listened to him, but this time, she just frowned.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I have to go. Everyone needs my help."

Dad shook his head. "You're eight years old," he reminded her firmly. "You're just a kid. You're not supposed to be getting involved in…things like this." Under his breath, he added, "Not that I know what 'this' really is…"

"Dad," began Nanako.

"Your mother wouldn't like it," insisted Dad. "She'd want you to be safe, and to listen to your father. Yu, I will not have her going back in there. You can make your own decisions, for what it's worth, but Nanako-!"

"Mom would like it," interrupted Nanako suddenly. Dad stopped and stared at her. "I don't remember

much, but….you're always telling me that Mom would want me to be brave and to be a big girl, and to be responsible, and to help other people. This is helping other people. This is being responsible. They need me. I have a special power. I can keep people safe."

"Nanako, I cannot and will not risk losing you again," growled Dad. "God knows I haven't been a very good father. I've put you in enough danger already, and maybe if I had realized sooner what was going on…but I will not let you put your life at risk any longer."

In her heart, Nanako knew that Dad was only saying these things because he loved her. She loved him too, very much, even when he was being belligerent and difficult and…just plain too adult to handle. She couldn't help herself, though. She had to say it.

"Would you risk losing Big Bro?" she asked him. "Or Minako? Because they need me. If we are all together, we can all be safe and protect each other. Do you want me to give up on them? I thought you didn't like people who give up on other people. That's what you told me before. Did you lie?"

That seemed to fluster Dad for a moment. "Of course I didn't lie," he told her. "It's just that…that this isn't your responsibility."

Nanako bit her lip. "Then whose is it?" she asked.

Dad didn't have an answer for that. Instead, he looked helplessly at Yu, who had just rolled out of the kitchen holding a plate full of sandwiches.

"Don't look at me," said Yu, holding up one hand as though he was protecting himself from Dad's stare. "I don't tell her what to do. Nanako makes her own decisions."

"Just like Chisato," muttered Dad. "I can see it more and more every day, goddamnit. Fine. Then if she's going in there, so am I. I don't care if I don't have one of those…what do you call it? Personas? I'm going to protect my daughter. That's all I can do. That's all that matters."

Nanako realized that she did not like that idea one little bit. If dad went inside the TV world, he'd have to face the shadows too, and he didn't have anyone like Icarus or Dawn to keep him safe. What was he going to do, just stand there and shout at the shadows to stop and listen to him, or to do what he told them before he had to send them to their rooms? Sometimes, shouting and looking scary worked on bad guys, too, Nanako knew. Bad guys in the real world, like robbers and stuff, sometimes just got scared of Dad, who could be pretty scary when he really wanted to. Then he could catch them, and turn them in. Sometimes, he had to use his gun, but even then he could probably catch them.

The TV world, though, wasn't like the real world. The bad guys in the TV world, and in the Velvet Room were much bigger, much scarier, and could do things that robbers and criminals out here couldn't do. Dad might be a good detective, she thought, but he wouldn't be able to use that stuff on the shadows. It just wouldn't work. He wasn't good enough to protect her from the shadows, no matter how much he wanted to.

It was the first time, really, that Nanako had ever thought of Dad as not being strong or powerful enough to protect her. All her life, she'd looked at him as someone who could never be beaten, someone who could always save her from everything. She'd felt safe with him, no matter what.

This new feeling, this new realization that it wasn't true anymore, was the worst thing Nanako could remember feeling. Unconsciously, she curled up a little closer to the couch.

**The next morning, at Junpei's house…**

Having used Rise's key to get in, Yosuke and most of the investigation team were now hanging out at Junpei's place, supposedly working on getting it set up and decorated for the big Christmas party that they were planning to have with their long-lost SEES friends. Yosuke looked around at the damage being done. Kanji, who was supposed to be hanging ceiling decorations, was instead now standing on a chair and staring at Naoto, who was in the process of helping Chie decorate the Christmas tree.

"She looks real pretty…with all those lights around her," he muttered, as Yosuke came over to reprimand him for slacking off. "Green ones, and blue ones…"

Before Yosuke could even open his mouth, Naoto turned around and raised a quizzical eyebrow at Kanji, who blushed a totally guileless bright red, and immediately went back to what he was doing.

"Don't forget the mistletoe!" announced Rise brightly, handing it up to Kanji.

Yosuke rolled his eyes. "Wait, seriously? Dude, you have been spending way too much time with Junpei…"

"Yes," added Yukiko, her eyes twinkling almost mischievously as she went through and washed some of the dishes that were still piled up in the sink. "That reminds me, Rise-chan…how come you already have a key to Junpei's house? I didn't realize the two of you were in such a serious relationship…"

Yosuke had half expected Rise to turn as red as Kanji currently was, but she didn't. Still as calm and collected as always, she tossed her hair, raised her chin slightly, and told them, "It's nothing like that. We're just a pair of mature adults having a little bit of fun, that's all."

"Adults?" asked Chie. "Hey, Rise-chan…aren't you the youngest one here?"

Rise didn't seem to have anything to say to that. "The mistletoe, Kanji, remember?" she said instead.

"Yeah, I'm on it," he mumbled.

"It occurs to me," murmured Naoto, "that 'adult' is more of a state of mind than any arbitrary classification determined solely by a person's age. To be an 'adult' is to be of a mature and rational way of thinking, as well as acting." After a moment's thoughtful pause, she added, more to herself than to anyone else, "Although, I suppose that by my very definition, the term 'adult' would not allow for any injection of what Rise refers to as 'fun.'"

The decorating party continued in companionable silence for a couple more moments, until Chie, ever the soul of self control and tact, asked the obvious question.

"So…Junpei's on vacation with Minako, right?" she began. "Is that…is that okay? I mean, don't you mind that he's spending time in a hotel with another girl?"

This time, Kanji didn't even pretend to still be hanging things. Now, all eyes and all focus was leveled on Rise, who was, as an idol, at least somewhat used to that kind of curious, intense attention.

"No," she said calmly. "No, Minako doesn't bother me. She and Junpei have been through a lot together. They're very good friends. Actually, sometimes I think he forgets that she isn't really his sister, like…oh, like Yu and Nanako-chan."

"Yes," agreed Yukiko, "but Minako-chan is a woman. She's not a little girl, like Nanako."

Rise looked slightly flustered, but Naoto, apparently annoyed by all the gossip, interjected. "I think you're absolutely correct," she informed Rise. "There is very little sexual or romantic interest apparent between Junpei and Minako. Rise has nothing whatsoever to be worried about, so I believe it would be best if we dropped the subject."

"Wait," asked Chie, "What do you mean, 'very little?' So there's at least a little bit, then, right?"

"Um, Naoto-kun…" murmured Yukiko, turning slightly pink. "You didn't have to put it like that…"

Yosuke sighed. He rarely felt sorry for Rise, but at this moment, she seemed to be getting a little more of this than she really deserved. After all, he knew that Minako and Junpei weren't a…well, a thing. They had never been a thing. It wasn't Minako that Rise should have been worried about.

Once, when Yosuke and Minako had been chatting together, she'd told him about this girl that Junpei had loved when they'd been back in high school. What had her name been? He couldn't remember. Midori, maybe? Or maybe it had been Chiriko. Anyway, Minako was worried that Junpei wasn't really over this girl, and that being with Rise wasn't going to solve the problem any faster. If there was anything that Rise should be concerned about with Junpei being back in Iwatodai for the week, that was probably it. He was not, of course, going to say any of that out loud. Nobody here needed any more fuel for their gossip, and he wasn't gonna be the guy who leaked Minako's secrets to everybody in the room.

Not like he'd done yesterday, anyway, when he'd somehow managed to let Dojima-san in on all of the TV world secrets with one single bad judgment call. What the hell had he been thinking? What were they going to do now, if Dojima-san tried to stop them from going back in there? What if he took their Wild Card away?

A little voice in the back of Yosuke's mind, the one that was always there, but that he tried so hard not to listen to, told him that maybe he'd wanted something like this all along. If Dojima put a stop to their forays into the Velvet Room, then Yosuke wouldn't have anything more to worry about it. It would all be out of his hands. Someone else would be making the calls, and he would just have to go along with them. That would be relaxing, refreshing, and potentially disastrous for both Yu and Minako.

At that moment, the door opened, and Teddie came in, still wearing what had become his mascot fur. "Heeey," he said, "Guess what everybody? Junes is having a sale on holiday cookies, so I got us a box! Who's hungry?"

As everyone dropped what they were doing to take a cookie break, Yosuke gave Teddie a suspicious look.

"Did you even pay for these?" he asked.

Teddie sparkled innocently up at him. "Mmph?" he asked, around a mouthful of cookie.

**Eleven - Christmas Eve**

**Author's Note: **So, having finally aligned the two stories again (phew, that was a little more difficult than I thought), we are finally at Christmas eve. Just to let you know, there's a lot of overlap here, so here's a quick little guide to today's updates:

In this story, you'll see the events of the Christmas Eve party at Junpei's place. If you want to know what happens to Minako after she leaves the party, you'll want to go over and check out the most recent update of **Messiah.**

I've been looking forward to writing these chapters, and now I'm stuck in bed because of my foot, so there's nothing else in the world that I should be doing at this exact moment, other than working on this story.

What a treat for me!

**Eleven – Christmas Eve**

It was already pretty late in the evening, and everyone was starting to get restless.  
"Do you think they're okay?" asked Chie, sounding genuinely worried. "You don't think they got into an accident or anything, do you?"

"Well…that guy Junpei does drive pretty fast," muttered Yosuke, although he hoped that it was quiet enough that nobody could hear him. A little louder, he announced, "Nah, I'm sure they're fine. It's a long drive from Iwatodai. They probably just had to make a pit stop or something. Maybe more than one. How many cars are they taking, anyway?

Kanji yawned. "You know, it's getting past my bedtime," he remarked. "How much longer do you think it's gonna be?"

Rise gave him a disgusted look. "Your bedtime?" she asked. "What are you, Kanji, twelve? Anyway, it's Christmas eve! Nobody's going g to sleep tonight, so suck it up. Maybe you'd better have a cup of coffee…there's a coffee maker in the kitchen, I can go get you one."

Rise went off to get the coffee. "Hey, we've got a pretty nice set-up going on in here!" she called out. "I think even Shinjiro-san will be impressed by what we threw together."

"I…don't think that he's going to come," murmured Yukiko. "You know, after everything that happened this summer…"

Yosuke hadn't even thought about that. What if Shinjiro did come along? All they needed right now was just a little more drama. He sighed involuntarily. Please, he begged the universe at large, please, all he and everyone else needed was one night where nothing went disastrously or dramatically wrong.

Suddenly Yosuke could hear the sound of wheels on the pavement, and a car horn honked in the driveway.

"They made it," announced Yu, who was peering out the front window. "Looks like four cars."

Yosuke relaxed a little bit. "Okay, everybody," he called out. "Let's all get into place! This is the big one!"

Rise hurried back from the kitchen, and everyone else arranged themselves around the room, in places where they could see or be close to the doors.

"Wait!" announced Teddie. "Hold on, guys! Where's Nana-chan? Shouldn't she be here for this?"

Yosuke swallowed. "Um…we can talk about that later, okay? Just uh…just hold that thought for a little bit." Right now just didn't seem the right time to tell everyone had had happened the day before with Nanako and Dojima. Yosuke and Yu locked eyes for a moment, and Yu gave a single nod of approval. Okay, thought Yosuke, so Yu was on board. They'd tell everyone about what had happened later, when they had a chance to sit down and have a real, full-scale strategy meeting.

The door started to creak open, and even Yosuke tensed slightly as Junpei stuck his head into the room.  
"Hey," he said. "How come everything's so-!"

"Welcome back!" shouted the entire investigation team, standing up and hurrying forward to greet their old friends.

"Ken-kun!" exclaimed Naoto, reaching to pat him affectionately on the shoulder. "It is such a pleasure to see you again. Goodness…you do seem to have grown up a bit."

Ken beamed at Naoto, something that Yosuke didn't remember him making a regular habit of doing. Ken usually looked so serious, but right now, he looked almost like a normal kid. "I'm almost five feet tall, now," he informed Naoto. "Kanji-san, how are you? Oh dear, you look, um…"

The coffee that Rise had brought did not appear to be having a positive effect on Kanji. His eyes were slightly crossed. "Ugh, got a headache," he muttered. "S'okay, I'll be fine…nice to see you, Ken."

"Mitsuru-san!' Yukiko was warmly clasping the hands of the imposing-looking Kirijo family heir. "I've been wanting to talk to you. I've been thinking about what you told me in your last letter, about the way to a man's heart…"

Yosuke blinked in surprise. He hadn't realized that Mitsuru and Yukiko had even been corresponding. The way to a man's heart? What was that all about? Didn't everybody know that it was usually food?

"I'm glad to hear it," murmured Mitsuru. "I look forward to seeing if my advice does you any good. Of course, you'll have to let me know in your next letter how everything turns out. That is, of course, unless you'd like to try out that advice today…"

Yosuke hurried away from that conversation. Somehow, he didn't really want to know what was going on, or be a witness if something happened that he didn't need any part of.

"Oh, wow!" exclaimed Chie. "Who's this?" Yosuke looked over to see that Chie was now enthusiastically scratching behind the ears of a shiba inu dog, which was sitting back on its haunches and closing its eyes in apparent pleasure. It barked in response to her question.

"That's Koromaru," Akihiko informed her. "He's a persona-user, like us."

"No way," said Chie, shaking her head. "Are you joking? He's just a little guy."

"It's true!" insisted Yukari. "Koro-chan may be a dog, but he's just as strong and hard-working as any person I've ever met."

Rise, who had been chatting with Fuuka over near the kitchen door, now walked over and joined Chie in petting and pampering Koromaru. "Aww, he's so cute!" she squealed. "I bet you're super brave in battle, too, aren't you boy?"

Koromaru barked in affirmation. Next to the sofa, Teddie regarded Koromaru with evilly slitted eyes.

"I feel as though my position as mascot and resident cuteness in this group is being challenged," he muttered coldly. Yosuke almost felt bad for him. After all, none of the girls were paying him any attention. Then again, how was that any different from the way things usually worked? It's not as though anyone was as interested in Teddie as he always seemed to think they were, and maybe it was a good thing for him to get a wake-up call, to make him realize that his creepy way of hitting on every girl in the room honestly wasn't so cute.

Then, that robot girl was in the doorway, and all the chatter in the house came to a dead stop.

What, wondered Yosuke, was she doing here? How could Minako have even let her in here, after everything that had happened when they' first had to reseal that Nyx thing? Unconsciously, his hand went to his pocket, where he kept his persona card. Around the room, he could see several other people having the same reaction, reaching towards concealed weapons or into sleeves, socks, and pockets for their personas.

"Um…hello, everyone," murmured the robot. "I…I hope that this Christmas Eve finds all of you well…"

"What the hell-?" began Kanji.

It was Yu who interrupted him. Wheeling himself across the room, he stretched out a hand in greeting to the robot. "It's Aigis, isn't it?" he asked her. "I don't think we've actually been introduced. I'm Yu. Welcome to Inaba."

"Narukami-san," murmured Aigis. To Yosuke's intense surprise, she bowed to him in a gesture of deep respect. "Thank you. I am…honored to be invited to this party. I hope that we can put behind us the things that have become part of the past."

Slowly, almost hesitantly, conversations began to begin again. People were drawing their eyes away from Aigis and back towards each other, or to the kitchen table which was laden with various Christmas goodies. Yu rolled over to the door to meet Minako and Junpei as they finally came in from the car, and Yosuke, shaking himself and trying to let his anger subside, hurried over to join them.

"Hey," he asked Minako. "How was your trip? We kinda missed you around here."

"Yeah," agreed Yu, with a little twinkle of amusement in his eye. "You should have seen the way uncle Dojima looked when he came home from work the first day that you were gone. You might get a little more respect around the office from now on."

"Respect? From him?" Minako laughed. "That's…not likely, although it's nice to hear that he missed me, I think."

The mention of Dojima's name sent another little twinge of guilt stabbing through Yosuke's chest. Maybe he could at least tell Minako about what happened right now. After all, she was sort of the leader of the SEES guys, wasn't she? She'd probably have to know before everyone else. Plus, it would be really nice to get this off of his chest.

"Can I talk to you for a second?" he asked her. "Um, sorry, it really won't take that long…"

He, Yu, and Minako settled themselves down in a corner of the room, away from the greetings and enthusiasm of the rest of the two teams. Junpei, abandoned by his friends, shrugged, sighed, and was then immediately accosted by an enthusiastic Rise, who threw herself into his arms and planted a big, bold kiss on his cheek.

"W-whoa, hey!" he stammered, wrapping his arms around her to give her a quick little hug. "I guess you missed me, huh?"

Yosuke noticed that Minako had turned her head in the direction of Junpei's voice, and was smiling and nodding to herself as she listened to him and Rise talking. She really did care about that guy, he thought to himself. Idly, he wished that he had a friend or two from back in the day, or from the place where he used to live. It would be nice to have someone who knew him as well as Junpei and Minako knew each other. Before he'd moved to Iwatodai, there really hadn't been anybody like that in his life. He'd said he didn't care about it, but…the more he watched his friends interact with each other, the more he wondered if, once upon a time, he'd been missing out.

Yu caught his eye, and gave him a quizzical look. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You look worried."

Instantly, Yosuke told himself to snap out of it. What had happened before didn't matter. He had the best friends in the world, now, and that was why he'd made sure that Junpei brought all the older persona users back here in the first place. Together, they were going to find a way to protect his friends, so that he never had to feel again what it might be like to be quite that lonely. That, he knew, was a really selfish way of looking at it, but as long as nobody could see inside his head, there was nothing for him to feel too bad about.

"Listen," he told Minako. "You're not going to like this, but just…just don't say anything until I finish talking, okay?"

Minako frowned. "I already don't like it," she told him. "Okay, I'll be quiet. What's up?"

Careful to leave out the fact that it had really been his fault in the first place, Yosuke told Minako all about Dojima's discovery of the TV world, and the reaction that he'd had to that discovery. Minako listened patiently throughout the entire thing, occasionally nodding to herself.

"So, that's what happened," finished Yosuke, a bit anticlimactically. "I thought you should know about it, at least before you see him again at work."

"Do the others know yet?" asked Minako.

Yosuke shook his head. "We…figured it would spoil the party."

Minako looked thoughtful for a moment, and a bit distracted, biting her lip and turning her head from side to side for a moment. Finally, she said, "Nanako isn't here." Yosuke gave her a surprised look, and she sighed, and said, "I can't hear her. When Nanako's in a room, you can usually tell. She's very…effusive, and she'd probably love Kormaru."

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke. "It sucks, but-!"

"She's probably disappointed at not having been invited," continued Minako. "I'm sure she knows why, but I bet she's very lonely right now, alone at home with a father who is probably not being terribly understanding of what she's going through. I know Dojima-san. So does Yu. He's probably being very distant, very distracted…and it's Christmas Eve. I think we should call her and invite her over."

"Uncle Dojima isn't going to let her go out alone," observed Yu.

Minako shrugged. "Then invite him too," she suggested. "We don't have anything to hide from him, anymore. It's probably better this way, in any case."

Yu readily agreed, and so Yosuke pulled out his cell phone and went to find a quiet place that he could use to make a phone call. As he walked through the room, he noticed that Kanji and Ken were sharing a very large plate of cookies, and that Akihiko was squaring up to let Chie punch him in the chest, which Yosuke could only assume was some kind of demonstration of how manly and buff he'd become since they last met. What, he wondered, would Mitsuru think of that? He looked around, but realized that he couldn't find her. Come to think of it, he had no idea what had happened to Yukiko, either. That probably wasn't a good sign. Shaking his head, he dialed the Dojima number, and took a deep breath while waiting for Nanako to pick up.

"Hello," she said finally, sounding tired and a little sad. "Dojima residence."

"Hey, Nanako!" Yosuke did his best to sound upbeat. Just listening to that note in her voice made him feel terrible that he hadn't done this much sooner. "Where are you? We thought you were going to come over and join us at Junpei's house for Christmas!"

"But…" Nanako sounded like she was trying very hard not to hope that this was good news. "Dad told me I'm not allowed to go out by myself anymore, and Big Bro said that I should do what Dad tells me to make sure he doesn't worry so much, at least for a little while…"

"So," said Yosuke, "why don't you bring your dad over here with you? There's plenty of extra food, and even he probably doesn't want to spend Christmas all by himself."

Nanako was so delighted that she dropped the phone, and Yosuke had to wait while she fumbled around for it on the ground. Eventually, they agreed that she'd do her best to get Dojima to bring her over as soon as possible, and Yosuke hung up.

As he turned back to the group, he saw Minako standing over by the Christmas tree, hanging a little multicolored paper star from one of the lower branches.

"What's that?" he asked. "Did you make it?"

Minako gave him a strange, bitter little smile. "It's the wrapper from the cupcake that Shinji made for me last Christmas," she told him. "I didn't want to lose it, so I cut it into a star and kept it on my dresser. I thought it might look nice on our tree."

That's right, thought Yosuke. In the end, Shinjiro had never shown up to the party. Yosuke didn't know the whole story behind what had happened during the breakup, but he knew that it had been ugly, messy, and that the girls had strictly forbidden him from ever asking Minako about it. It would, they assured him seriously, be much too painful.

Still, he couldn't himself. She just looked so…well, different. Not like her usual happy, upbeat self. "Hey," he said, "you know, if you ever want to talk about it, I'm here to listen." Those words sounded so familiar in his head that he had to stop and think for a moment. Where and when had he said that before?

Minako reached out and gave his hand a little squeeze. "Thank you," she said, like she meant it. "You know, I might take you up on that someday."

Yosuke opened his mouth to say something else, but at that moment the door opened with a bang, and Nanako ran inside, shouting, "Hi everybody! I'm sorry we're so late! Look, I brought cookies!" She was holding a plate of what looked like homemade Christmas cookies, all bundled up in crinkly saran-wrap and tied with a red and green bow.

"More cookies?" asked Junpei, his eyes going wide. "Aw, man, we have, like…plates and plates of them."

"Don't worry," said Chie, laughing. "I promise, they'll get eaten. Come on in, Nanako-chan! Let's put those down in the kitchen."

As Chie and Nanako hurried past, Dojima strode inside and looked somewhat suspiciously around at the group. Yosuke swallowed. At the same moment, Yu and Minako both came forward to greet the detective.

"I'm glad you could make it, uncle," said Yu, perhaps a little more formally than he normally would. "Are you hungry?"

"Got any booze?" muttered Dojima.

Minako laughed. "No," she said. "There are underage kids at this party, remember?" Yosuke was impressed by the sparkle in her voice. All of her previous sadness seemed to have been forgotten.

He never could seem to keep himself together when it came to detective Dojima. The guy was just so…imposing. Then again, Minako had dated one of the most legitimately scary guys that Yosuke had ever met. Maybe this was just second nature to her, now.

"Excuse me a moment," she told them, heading for the door. "I'm going to step out for a little fresh air. I won't be gone long. Save some cookies for when I get back, okay?"

As she left the house, Yosuke noticed that Junpei waited a few moments, and then followed her, closing the door behind him as quietly as he could as he went.

Uh oh, thought Yosuke. What if, he wondered, there really was something going on between those two? That would be awful for poor Rise.

"Hey Yosuke!" called Chie. "What are you doing? Come on, the party's over here!"

Pushing the unworthy thoughts about Junpei and Minako out of his mind, Yosuke hurried over to join his friends.

**Twelve - Christmas Day**

**Author's Note: **I am just so excited for some of the things I have in store for you guys in my two current stories…last night, on the way back from rehearsal, I did some re-plotting of a few of the later chapters, and…I can't wait to show you the fun stuff! First, though, we have to sort out some important plot.

Oh, by the way, I'll be out of town tomorrow for the Passover holiday, so there won't be an update. You'll have one on Wednesday night, though. Happy Pesach, to anyone who is celebrating it!

As we move farther along in this story, I strongly encourage you to remember the things that Yu suggested about the real reasons for his and Minako's seemingly random injuries. If you need a refresher on just exactly what that theory was, he shares with Minako in chapter nineteen of **Messiah**.

**Twelve – Christmas Day**

A few hours into the party, when Christmas had finally come, Yosuke walked out of the kitchen to see Dojima standing against the wall and just staring dead ahead at Aigis. Aigis, who was who was saying something emphatically to Junpei and Rise, didn't seem to have noticed, although Yosuke thought that anyone, even someone who wasn't entirely human, would have been able to feel a stare as intense as Dojima's on his or her back.

"Um…sir?" he asked. "Is…something wrong?"

Dojima glanced over at him. "What is that thing?" he asked, pointing at Aigis. "Another mascot? It looks like some kind of robot…"

Yes, thought Yosuke. It didn't seem as though Aigis had taken any particular care to hide the fact that she wasn't just like everybody else. If you didn't' look too closely at her, you could get away with not noticing, but Detective Ryotaro Dojima probably looked pretty closely at just about everything.

Yosuke gave up. After all, robots were the last thing that he or Dojima really had to worry about right now. "Yeah," he agreed, "she's…pretty much. Although, I think, technically, she might an android." As far as he could remember, Minako had said that there was a difference. Not that he cared.

He was prepared for more questions. Honestly, he had to admit to himself that if Dojima had asked him about Aigis, he would have relished the opportunity to tell all about how Aigis had tortured Yu. Dojima, at least, would probably be willing to hate her just as much as Yosuke did. He seemed like the kind of guy to hold a grudge, and right now, Yosuke really needed someone who was good at grudges.

Unfortunately, Dojima didn't seem to be in the mood. "…right," was all he said. "Yeah. An android. Sure." He nodded slowly to himself, then opened his mouth, closed it, and reached a hand into his pants pocket. "I need a smoke," he mumbled. "I'm just gonna-!"

Suddenly, Minako was somehow, at Dojima's elbow. Minako breezed past him, plucking the pack of cigarettes out of his hand as she went. "Nope," she said over her shoulder, as she moved off into the throng of her friends. "Dojima-san, we had a deal."

"I don't get how she does that," murmured Yosuke sympathetically. "She shouldn't be able to do that. How did she even know where you-?"

Dojima just shook his head and sighed. "That's not the first time that's happened," he admitted.

"Where's Nanako-chan?" asked Yosuke.

"She fell asleep hours ago," said Dojima. "Iori told me I could put her to sleep on the bed upstairs.

Yosuke frowned. "Didn't you want to go home?"

Shaking his head, Dojima told him, "Yu says there's going to be a meeting tonight. If you're all going to be talking about this…'TV world' stuff, then I'm going to hear it.'"

Of course, thought Yosuke, with a little inward sigh. "Okay," he said. "Well, it's…probably time for us to do that, then. I'll go get everybody together."

It took him a few minutes to find everybody. Yukiko and Mitsuru were finally back, although Yosuke still had no idea where or why they'd gone in the first place. He had a sneaking, sinking suspicion that he'd find out soon enough. Ken was helping Kanji repair some of the damage that had been done to the tree decorations when Teddie had challenged Koromaru to a duel of cuteness, and Koromaru had responded by bowling him over backwards into the tree, licking his face and barking enthusiastically. The winner had been pretty clear, although at least Minako and Yu had found the good graces to help Teddie back up again. He was now sulking, and talking to Fuuka, who was patting his fur consolingly. She seemed to have a very calming effect on people. Yosuke wondered if they could keep her. Having someone around who was good at forcing Teddie to chill out would be a huge asset…

Akihiko and Naoto seemed to be heatedly debating something over by the windowsill. As Yosuke got closer, he could see that they'd laid out Naoto's gun and one of Akihiko's gloves side by side, and were gesturing to them emphatically as they spoke.

"….just as much of a kick as any firearm," Akihiko was insisting. "I can hit just as fast, and with just as much force."

Naoto shook her head. "That is a physical impossibility, Akihiko-san," she informed him. "The very nature of the firearm is such that…"

Yosuke abandoned them to their discussion.

Once he'd managed to round everyone up, they all ranged themselves around the couch. Some people sat in chairs, some on the ground, and some on the sofa itself. As though his presence wasn't imposing enough already, Dojima insisted on standing just behind the couch, where he could effectively loom over everyone and glare at them from on high.

"Okay," muttered Yosuke, doing his best to ignore the detective. "So, everybody knows why we're here, right?"

"Merry Christmas to you too," sneered Junpei.

"Shut up," Yosuke told him. "Seriously, though. We're all clear on what's been happening?"

"It might be beneficial," murmured Aigis from the floor, "if you were to inform those of us who have traveled from Iwatodai of any new information acquired since the re-sealing of Nyx. I, for one, am uncertain as to my grasp of the present situation, although I have been informed of sporadic facts over the course of this festive evening."

Right, thought Yosuke. That made sense.

He spent at least the next half an hour explaining, as best he could, everything that they'd learned about the Velvet Room, the shadows, and the worlds inside the minds of their friends, occasionally doubling back to cover any details that he might have missed. After a while, Minako and Yu got up to help him, and together the three of them put together an effective picture of the story so far.

The one thing that all three of them were careful not to mention was Adachi's involvement. It was like an unspoken agreement that nothing about Adachi was relevant to anything they were talking about at the moment. Nobody even tried to bring him up. Yosuke assumed that Minako and Yu, like him, were hoping to keep Dojima as far away from that clusterfuck as they possibly could, although the two of them did exchange an inaudible whisper when Yosuke mentioned the demise of the three Velvet Room assistants.

He also, per his agreement with Junpei, didn't say anything about Thanatos while Minako was around. There'd be plenty of time to talk about that later.

"So," he finished, "um, that's why we asked you guys to come and help us out. This can't go on forever. We need to find a solution to the Velvet Room problem, before Yu and Minako get seriously hurt. You're the more experienced persona users, so we were hoping that you might know something that we don't."

The slightly alarmed looks on the faces of most of his SEES listeners warned Yosuke ahead of time that they probably didn't. He tried not to let his heart sink. Okay, well, he should have been expecting that. Still, multiple heads were better than one, right?

"What exactly did Igor say about sealing up Minako's mind?" asked Akihiko.

"Um…" Yosuke frowned. "That we could do it the same way that we'd sealed Nyx."

"Oh," added Yukari, "but he didn't say that you have to do it that way, right?" She glanced around at the other investigation team members for approval. "Right?"

Yukiko spoke up hesitantly. "Excuse me, Yosuke, but…that's not exactly what Igor said. Not really. What he actually said was that the doors to Minako's and Yu's minds could be sealed from the inside. He did mention the Great Seal, but…he never told us that we'd have to perform it again."

"A riddle," murmured Aigis thoughtfully.

"Ugh, that's just like him," lamented Yukari. "So, it has to happen 'from the inside?' Someone has to go in there and seal it, and then find a way back out again?"

"Nah, can't be," insisted Junpei. "Cause if it's sealed good, nobody should be able to get in or out."

"We should go and look at the doors again," Fuuka suggested. "Perhaps that would give us a better idea. It could be some kind of trick…"

Fair enough, thought Yosuke. "Then, in that case," he said, "why don't we plan on heading over to the Velvet Room in the morning?"

"The morning?" asked Rise, yawning. "Yosuke, it's already four AM…"

"Okay," said Yosuke patiently, "then let's get a few hours of sleep, and then we'll go to the Velvet Room. It's Christmas, so pretty much nobody's working, right? I've got a key to Junes, so it shouldn't be hard for us to get in without being noticed. Afterwards, we can all come back here and have another meeting to see if we've come up with any new ideas."

Everyone seemed to agree with this plan. There was a general murmur of assent rippling around the room. Even Dojima, apparently without realizing it, was nodding along with the tide of opinion.

Thinking about Dojima reminded Yosuke of something. While the others chattered, he leaned over to Yu and Minako. "Look," he said, "I know that we can't let Dojima-san into the TV, and I'm not planning to, but…based on what happened last time, we can't be too careful, you know? We're gonna need to get Adachi out of there, just in case."

Yu looked at Minako. "We can ask Nanako to let him out," he told her.

Minako shrugged. "I'll take care of it," she said.

**Several hours later, outside the electronics department….**

Dojima was very tense. He hadn't gotten any sleep. That wasn't unusual; except that this time, he hadn't gotten any sleep, but hadn't gotten any work done while staying awake, either. It might have been the lack of productivity that was really wearing down on him. Wasted time wasn't something that he could really afford, especially in light of recent events.

The trouble was, he still couldn't figure out exactly what action he was supposed to take, when it came to the TV world crap. He wanted to do something useful, but there didn'' seem to be anything useful to do.

At the moment, he was just sitting in a plastic food court chair outside the big TV in the Junes electronics department. Everyone else had gone into the TV, and he'd had to watch each of them get sucked in like they were going through some watery vortex, which was disturbing and nonsensical in so many ways.

Well, all right, he admitted. That wasn't entirely fair. Not everyone had left him. For a few minutes, Yu and Minako had stuck around to keep him company. It hadn't been long, though, before the other two had exchanged some very conspiratorial whispers, whispers that were absolutely the precursor to some sort of organized crime. Then Minako had left, on her own, and now Dojima and Yu were here together, just sitting, watching, and waiting.

"This is terrible," Dojima muttered. "You can't even hear what's going on in there. How are we supposed to know if they need help?"

Yu said nothing for a moment.

"Well?" asked Dojima.

Glancing up at him, Yu frowned. "Uncle Dojima," he remarked quietly, "I'm sorry, but you don't get any sympathy from me on this one. This is your first time watching from the sidelines. I've been doing this for almost a year."

That shut Dojima up. Okay, he realized, that was a very good point. Yu didn't have any more say in this than he did. Actually, Yu was really a victim here. Whatever was going on, it had cost him his ability to walk.

"There used to be something that I could do about it," continued Yu. Dojima got the sense that he was really talking to himself. "I used to be able to help. Now I just sit here…and when everybody comes back out, I have to smile about it and act like it doesn't bother me. Otherwise they'll worry. So, with all due respect, I'd really appreciate it if you could not make this worse."

Two different sides of Dojima began to war against each other for control of his mind. The "super detective" side of him was eventually beaten and quashed by the "good old uncle" side.

"Hang in there, kid," he told Yu, clapping him on the shoulder in a show of fatherly encouragement. "They went in there to figure out how to fix you, right? They're smart people, and they're your best friends. They seem pretty determined not to let you down…so cheer up. They'll think of something."

**Thirteen - Christmas Day**

**Author's Note: **Oh hooray, things are finally started to get rolling with this plot! I'm excited. I actually have another update for you today, but I have to get some work done first, so stay tuned!

I can see that a lot of you are reading this story, which is so delightful and gratifying! Thank you so much! I would love, it though, if those of you who haven't reviewed yet would take a moment to review the story, just to let me know what you like, and what you don't like. It's always a big help to me, to hear things like that! I know we're all busy, no pressure, but I'd appreciate it!

**Thirteen – Christmas Day**

"So…what exactly are we looking for?" asked Yukari, as she, Junpei, and Akihiko stood inside the door to Minako's mind, staring around helplessly at the walls.

"I, uh…I dunno," muttered Junpei. "Something that'll make sense, I guess? You know something that'll help us 'seal the mind from the inside,' or whatever it was that Igor said. Right, Yosuke?"

Yosuke, who was on the other side of the room, inside the door to Yu's mind, shrugged. "That's the plan, yeah." When they'd first come into the Velvet Room, he'd directed the members of SEES to go and check out Minako's mind, while the investigation team handled Yu's mind. Neither investigation had revealed any worthwhile information so far, though. The "rooms" inside the minds were, thankfully, as sound as ever, but they were also completely devoid of any clues as to how to permanently close them. Nobody was any farther along now than they had been an hour ago, and Yosuke had already heard some rebellious murmurs from Akihiko about this being a waste of everyone's time.

"Any luck, guys?" asked Rise, as she and Fuuka walked over to join Yosuke and the others. "We asked Igor if he had any more to tell us, but he wasn't very helpful… not that I was expecting much from that guy." She looked annoyed. "Everything's always a riddle with him. I bet him and Adachi get along great. They probably sit here all day coming up with new ways to mess around with people's heads."

"Rise-chan!" said Yosuke. "Man, am I glad you're here. You're just the person I need right now. Hey, can you get Kouzeon to scan the inside of this room? If we can't figure anything out, maybe your persona can…after all, it's never let us down before, right?"

"Uh, except for the time when we tried to beat that snake shadow thing," Kanji reminded him. "Wasn't a lot of help then…"

Rise gave him the kind of dagger-laden stare that only a practiced performer really could give. Kanji, totally oblivious, went back to poking at the walls. Apparently unable to take her frustration out on Kanji, Rise rolled her eyes at Naoto, who blinked, nodded sympathetically, and then returned to her task.

"I'll help too," murmured Fuuka. Crossing the room, she headed over to stand next to Yukari, who had to step back as Fuuka summoned her persona. Everyone stood around respectfully and watched as Juno and Kouzeon did a careful check of the surrounding areas.

The scan seemed to take an awfully long time. Yosuke tried not to get too impatient. He wasn't the only one.

"So?" asked Junpei. "What's the deal?"

Fuuka and Rise looked across at each other, and then shook their heads. Both personas vanished back into the users from which they'd' come.

"Ugh," grumbled Rise. "Nothing. There's nothing here. This is a dead end…Kouzeon can't sense anything. Are you sure we're remembering it right? What Igor said, I mean? Wasn't there anything else?"

Yosuke sighed. Oh well, he thought. It hadn't been a bad idea to have them check, at least. He was just opening his mouth to say something, although he wasn't yet quite sure what, when Fuuka spoke up.

"Um, I found this," she said, and there was an urgency in her voice that hadn't been there before. "It…probably isn't quite what you were looking for, though."

Yosuke followed her pointing finger to see a shadow starting to materialize inside of Minako's mind. It was actually pretty small, and compared to some of the things they'd found in there, didn't look all that terrifying, but Yosuke knew better than to leave it alone in there for longer than he absolutely had to. The shadow was taking the form of some kind shelled-creature, maybe a snail, or a…Yosuke couldn't be sure. Anyway, it had a shell. That probably meant it was going to slightly harder to hit.

"Takehaya Susano-o," he called, and his persona came forth and hovered in front of him, waiting for commands. Around him, several of the investigation team members reached for their persona cards, then stopped, frowned, and looked at each other, apparently uncertain as to exactly who should prepare for battle, and who should take a backseat this time.

The SEES members, on the other hand, didn't seem to have any such problem. In a couple of swift movements, Fuuka had again summoned Juno, and Mitsuru, Junpei, Akihiko, and Yukari had stepped forward, while the rest of the group moved carefully and silently back against the walls to give them all the fighting space they required.

"Damn," muttered Yosuke. They were very good. He wondered idly if a few years more of experience would help his team be able to work together just that well. In the meantime, he'd have to make a party decision. Let's see, he thought. Nanako had fire personas, and could also heal. Kanji could use lightning, which left him to use wind, and Chie to use ice. Both Chie and Kanji could do some pretty intense physical attacks, too, and that wasn't a bad starting lineup for a little shadow like this.

"Nanako, Chie, and Kanji," he said, trying to sound as confident and leaderly as possible. "With me. The rest of you get back."

As the group shuffled dutifully around to obey him, Yosuke felt a little surge of pride. He hadn't done too badly that time. Even Mitsuru was looking at him with less than her usual disdain. That was progress, right?

"Kanji," he began again, "try a-!"

"Ziodyne," said Akihiko, and a bolt of lightning struck the shell, before apparently bouncing off. "No good," he growled. "Either lightning doesn't work, or we need to get it to open up so that we can hit the inside of the shell…"

"Bufudyne," commanded Mitsuru. Again, the attack struck, but refused to do any damage.

"Hey," said Yosuke. He had an idea. They needed to get it to open its shell, didn't they? He could think of one trick that tended to throw shadows off balance, or expose them to attacks. "Yukari-san," he called. "Um, can we try something? At the same time, ready? One, two, three-!"

At the same moment, Yosuke and Yukari performed a Garudyne attack. The shadow was swept up in a gust of wind, and blow over, revealing it's more vulnerable underbelly.

"Cool," said Kanjii. "Nice one, leader!"

Yosuke tried not to glow with pride.

It didn't take too long to defeat the thing, once they'd figured out how to get at its underside. A few heavy blows from Kanji and Junpei weakened it, and then Nanako finished it off with a burst of flame from Icarus.

Mitsuru, watching the shadow's demise with some apparent interested, asked, "As I understand it, the appearance of a shadow inside Arisato's mind means that she is experiencing a moment of strong emotion."

"Yeah that's pretty much what it looks like," agreed Yosuke.

"Hmm," murmured Mitsuru.

Yosuke wasn't quite sure what that meant, but for some reason, Nanako was turning pink and looking very uncomfortable. He was just about to ask her what the problem was, when Ken, who hadn't said a word throughout the entire investigation so far, left Minako's mind behind, and went over to talk to Nanako.

"You're pretty good," he said, with a tone of respect that Yosuke knew from experience was hard to evoke from fourteen year old boys.

Nanako immediately perked up. "Thanks!" she said, beaming. "I come on lots of patrols with the others, so I get lots of practice! Someday I'm gonna be as good as Chie, or Big Bro was!"

"Big Bro?" asked Ken. "You have a brother?"

"Um, he's actually my cousin," clarified Nanako. "This is his place!" She gestured at the walls of the room inside Yu's mind.

Ken just nodded. "Oh, I see," he said. "So I guess when he stopped being able to use his powers, you took over for him. Right?"

That seemed a little harder for Nanako to stomach. She frowned thoughtfully, and then eventually nodded back. "Yeah…" she agreed. "Yeah, I think so. I'm keeping him safe. That's what families do for each other!"

For the first time that Yosuke could clearly remember, Ken smiled. "That's right," he told her.

**Meanwhile, in the Junes food court…**

"It's been a really long time," growled Dojima, staring at the little clock in the corner of one of the sample TVs. More than an hour. Isn't there anything you can do?"

Dojima knew as soon as he saw the look on Yu's face that he probably should have phrased that differently.

"No," murmured Yu. "I'm afraid not."

Dojima sighed. "Look," he insisted, "Understand where I'm coming from. A couple of days ago, the world made sense. There were good guys, and there were bad guys. I had a job to do, and I was good at it. All the pieces were in place. Now, there's this…" He scowled. "I can't keep the pieces in place. Sense doesn't make sense anymore. "

Actually, he realized, that feeling had begun long before he'd finally realized the truth about the TV world. "It was you," he mumbled.

"What was me?" asked Yu.

"You were the one that shook everything up," he clarified. "Before, it was just Nanako and me. It was hard, but…we knew what we were doing. We had a routine, we had a system. Things would go the way they always went. Then you came along, and suddenly, we were a family, and everything was different, everything was more…delicate." Dojima was doing his best to put a lot of feelings into words, not something he was or wanted to be particularly good at. Feelings were supposed to be something that you kept inside, something that you didn't burden or bother other people with. They tended to get in the way of things and to make them more complicated, anyway.

"Uncle Dojima," began Yu.

Dojima shook his head in frustration. "You give us something like that," he muttered, "and now you're telling me that you might take it away again?"

"I'm not taking anything away," insisted Yu. "I would never-!"

"You died," said Dojima. He was surprised to hear how much accusation there was in his voice when he said that. "Nanako died…and then somehow, she came back. It was like a dream. Then, you died…and you came back, too. What about next time? When am I gonna wake up, huh? What if suddenly, the real world is the real world again, where people stay dead? Am I gonna sit there, waiting for you to come back, and then you just...don't? Nothing makes sense about any of this. I can't even prepare for what it would feel like to lose both of my kids…again. Maybe or maybe not for the last time."

Yu was quiet for a moment. "Both of your kids," he said.

Dojima shrugged. "Answer my question."

Yu took a deep breath. "It won't happen again," he insisted. "Nanako's not going to die. I'm not going to die. You said it yourself, my friends are in there doing their best to protect both of us. You won't have to lose your family anymore."

"I want your word on that," mumbled Dojima.

"You can have it," said Yu. "You have my word that I won't let anything break up your family-!"

"Our family," insisted Dojima, although he wasn't quite sure why.

"Our family," agreed Yu. "You have my word that I won't let anything break up our family, no matter what happens. So you can-!"

Suddenly, Yu stopped speaking, and breathed in sharply. His eyes rolled slightly back in his head, and he froze for a moment. Dojima stared at him. "What's going on?" he demanded. "Hey. Hey! Are you sick? Are you okay?"

A moment passed before Yu, blinked, exhaled, and relaxed slightly. He glanced over at Dojima, looking dazed. "Did you…hear something?" he asked.

Dojima shook his head. "No. Don't tell me you're hearing voices, now…jeez, this just gets worse and worse."

Quickly, Yu shook his head. "No," he insisted. "Not hearing voices. More like…feeling voices."

"Yeah," sighed Dojima. "Exactly. More crap that makes no sense."

Apparently ignoring him, Yu rolled his chair forward, until he was right in front of the giant TV set. He reached out with one finger, and hesitantly touched the screen. Dojima half expected sparks to fly out of his hand, or something else unexpected, but nothing happened. Yu's finger just bumped up against the screen and made a little "plink" noise.

"I thought you said that you couldn't get in," Dojima reminded him.

Yu nodded. "I can't," he agreed. "But…" Suddenly, he turned around. "I want to try something," he told Dojima. "I have to go to the shopping district. There's…someone there that I want to see. Will you come with me?"

Dojima snorted. "What, afraid to leave me here on my own?" he asked. "Can't say I blame you. If I could only get in there, I'd…"

"Actually," murmured Yu, "I was hoping that you'd help push the chair. We'd get there faster if I had another pair of hands." Unexpectedly, Yu bowed slightly from the waist. "I could use your help," he reiterated.

Dojima frowned. On one hand, he was suspicious that this might be a ploy to get him away from the TV. On the other hand, the thing with the eye-rolling hadn't looked much like an act. Yu's face was even paler, like something was really going on here. Maybe if he didn't go along for the ride, he'd miss something important, something that might otherwise give him a clue as to how to access this whole TV world nightmare.

"Yeah, sure," he said, standing up. "Fine, but…we'd better be back before they get out of that place."

"I don't think that will be a problem, either way," said Yu cryptically.

**Fourteen - Christmas Day**

**Author's Note: **…wait, seriously, what is up with my apostrophes? Apostrophes and commas seem to keep appearing in strange places in my documents. I know that they don't belong there…I do not intentionally put them there…and yet, they are there. Hmm. I am puzzled by this strange phenomenon.

Anyway, thank you for bearing with the typos. I'll try to figure out why I am doing that.

For those of you who are reading both stories, stuff is starting to match up again here. Actually, this part is a little tricky, so I have to decide whether to update **Messiah** or **Piecekeeping** next…it'll depend on how I want the reveal to play out, I suppose. I'll have to think about it. Well, let's tackle this update first…then I can worry about the next one. Or my ECE Policy homework. Or not.

**Fourteen: Christmas Day**

Nanako was doing her best not to stare at Ken.

Yu had told her about him once, when he'd been trying to explain all of the things that had been happening in the Velvet Room. Ken had used a persona to defeat that horrible Nyx thing when he was just ten years old! That was only two years older than Nanako! Actually, Nanako had once overheard Rise and Naoto talking about the fact that girls got mature a lot faster than boys did. If she looked at it that way, then she and Ken had been basically the same age when they'd started using a persona for the first time! She couldn't help it. She liked the idea. If Ken had really done all of those amazing things with his persona when he'd been her age, then she could probably do them too. She could definitely do them! Of course, he was fourteen now, and Nanako was aware that boys that age didn't really like to have girls following them around. Very, very carefully, she tiptoed after him as he walked from one side of Minako's mind to the other.

"Um, Amada-san," she murmured, as politely as she could. "Is it true that you can heal anything?"

Ken blinked at her. "Um…not anything," he replied.

"Because Minako says," continued Nanako eagerly, "that your persona can heal wounds, and even help people when they're so sick that they can't get up anymore! Minako says that you're the best healer!" Hesitantly, she glanced over her shoulder, then added, in an undertone, "Um…I don't think she wants anyone else to know that she said that, though, so…don't tell, okay?"

Ken smiled. Nanako even thought she almost saw him blush! "She said that about me?" he asked. "That's, um, very nice. I can heal some things, yes. Kala-Nemi does mostly light attacks, and pierce attacks, but…also healing."

Nanako frowned. "I can only do a little healing. Usually Yukiko or Teddie has to help," she said. "I can mostly just make stuff explode. Or catch fire," she added thoughtfully, "or, um, one time there was this big sort of red cloud of misty something, and then the shadow just…boom!" Gesturing emphatically with both hands, she tried to demonstrate what had become of the shadow.

Ken laughed. "No, that's good," he insisted. "Don't worry. You're a wild card, aren't you?"

"I think so," said Nanako. That was what Big Bro had told her, anyway, although she didn't really like that name. She didn't want to be a "wild" anything. "Wild" children were usually the badly behaved ones, and "wild" women were something else entirely.

"Then you'll learn," said Ken. "You told me that you want to protect your family, so you'll learn. Don't worry."

"Is that how you learned?" asked Nanako. "Because you wanted to protect someone?"

For some reason, Ken was very quiet after she said that. Nanako began to worry that she had said something inappropriate. "I'm sorry," she added hurriedly. "I'm not trying to be nosy. I just-!"

"It's okay," Ken assured her, shaking his head. "Yes, I think...maybe that's why. My mother and father died when I was very you-!" He stopped suddenly, looked at Nanako, and then apparently changed his mind. "When I was your age," he said instead. "So, I didn't want to lose anyone else. I mean, I don't want to. I want to protect all the people that I care about. Don't you want that, too?"

Nanako didn't know what to say to that. His mother and father had both died? That was too horrible to think about. Of course, she'd heard stories about people who had lost both of their parents. In fact, hadn't Minako's parents both died when she was a little girl, too? Still, it just seemed too terrible. True, Nanako's mother had died, but…Dad was still around. Dad would always be around, he'd told her that. Without Dad, things would be so lonely.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"It's okay," insisted Ken. "I met some great people because of what happened. I wouldn't have met them if my life had been different, so I have a lot to be happy about."

Nanako decided that she'd been wrong about Ken. Maybe some boys matured slower than girls, but Ken was about as adult as anyone she'd ever met.

Before she'd had a chance to figure out how to respond, though, something very strange happened. She thought, for a moment, that she heard Dad's voice sounding through the Velvet Room door just behind her.

"Uh oh," she said.

Ken stared at her. "What's wrong?" he asked. She watched as his hand went instinctively to the little gun that he kept in his pocket. Minako had once called it an "evoker." Nanako knew that Junpei used one too…but she definitely liked her persona card a lot better.

"Um," she said. "I think I hear my-!"

All of a sudden, Dad's voice was much louder. "Where's Nanako?" he was bellowing, probably at Igor. Instinctively, Nanako winced. "She's supposed to be in here. Where did she go? Where is everybody?"

"How the hell-?" began Yosuke, turning around to stare at the door that the voice was coming from. "There's no way he got in by himself. What was Yu doing, taking a nap? Aw, crap…"

The entire investigation team began to move towards the door, just as it burst open, revealing a furious and panicked-looking Dad, who went straight for Nanako. "There you are," he growled. "Jeez, you had me worried...hey, what is this place?" He gave the three assistant-shaped columns a dubious eye. "Gives me the creeps."

Then, several things happened at the same time. Yosuke and Chie opened their mouths and began asking Dad some very incoherent questions. The SSEES members starting muttering amongst themselves, apparently confused by Dad's entrance.

Nanako, however, wasn't paying attention to any of that. Instead, she was watching Yu wheel himself slowly in through the Velvet Room door.

"Big Bro!" she cried, running over and giving him a hug.

"Oh my god!" cried Chie. "Yu?"

"Whoa," said Kanji. "Wait, how did you-?"

"But…I thought you couldn't get into the Velvet Room," murmured Yukiko. "Without your persona, it should be impossible."

Yosuke walked over to them, and gave Yu a long look that Nanako couldn't read. "Is…is it over?" he asked. "I don't get it. Are you…"

Yu shook his head quickly. "No," he said. "No, nothing's changed. I still can't walk, there's still a part of my soul missing…it's all the same."

Yosuke looked slightly deflated. "Then how'd you get in?" he asked.

Yu seemed to have to think about that for a moment. "I don't know," he admitted finally. "Uncle Dojima and I were talking outside, and then, all of a sudden, I felt this voice in my head. It was the same feeling that you get when your persona awakens for the first time."

"But, I thought you said-!" interrupted Yosuke.

"I did," insisted Yu. "But…I figured, why not try? Look, I don't know what happened, exactly. But apparently now, I can enter the Velvet Room."

Yosuke grabbed on to Yu's chair. "We have to go see Igor," he was saying. "This could be big. Hey, maybe you're going to get better all by yourself! Maybe it's just a healing process thing." He kept talking, as he wheeled Yu out of the room and back into the Velvet Room. The rest of the investigation team followed, all talking and murmuring amongst themselves.

Nanako and Dad followed too, but when Yosuke and Yu stopped in front of Igor's chair, Dad kept walking.

"Dad, stop!" she called after him, but he wasn't listening. Instead, he pushed open the door, and headed out into the TV world, leaving Nanako unsure of what to do. On one hand, she wanted to stay with Yosuke and Yu, to find out what Igor would say about Yu's new ability to get into the Velvet Room. On the other hand, Dad was now walking around alone in the TV world. If she knew Dad, he was probably already looking for trouble.

"Go on," said Ken, unexpectedly appearing by Nanako's shoulder.

"But…" mumbled Nanako, biting her lip.

"It's okay," Ken assured her. "We're all here. Your Big Bro will be fine. Go and find your dad."

Nanako went.

She found him standing just a few steps outside the door, gazing around with wide eyes at the crazy studio-shaped landscape of the TV world.

"So," he mumbled to himself. "This is what all those calls were about, when that case began. The weird TV program that came on at midnight…I thought it was all some kind of a scam."

"Dad," hissed Nanako, pulling urgently at his arm. "We can't be here, it's not safe! Come back inside the Velvet Room, okay?"

Dad shook her off. "I can't believe I never realized it before," he was saying, although Nanako didn't think he was talking to her. "I had so many hints. So many people kept telling me about this place, but I was too pig-headed to figure it out. I might have saved lives."

"Dad!" Nanako insisted. "Come on, please?"

"Nanako," said Dad, turning suddenly on her, "I could have saved yours."

That made Nanako stop and stare at him. "Mine?" she squeaked. "But…I'm fine! I'm not dead."

"But you were," mumbled Dad under his breath. "You could have been. If only I'd listened to your cousin when I had the chance...none of this would have happened!"

Again, Nanako began tugging on Dad's arm. This wasn't, she knew, a good time for talking. She had to get him back into the Velvet Room, because Big Bro and Yosuke had said that if she didn't, he might-!

"Well," said a voice nearby, "Maybe it would have been easier if I wasn't the only person around here who was any good at my goddamn job. I mean, if they keep hiring those idiots to pretend to be policemen, we're never gonna be able to get anything done."

Nanako blinked. That had sounded like Dad's voice, only…meaner, somehow. It couldn't have been Dad, because she was looking right at him, and his mouth wasn't moving.

"Who the hell are you?" asked Dad. Nanako looked where he was looking, and her mouth fell open. Standing not too far from them both was …another Dad. At least, this person looked like Dad. He had the same clothes, the same hair, but…his voice was meaner, and his eyes were…were yellow. Yellow eyes, thought Nanako. Shadows had yellow eyes. Then, was this person the shadow that Yosuke and Big Bro had told her about? Was this…Dad's shadow?

"Oh no…" she moaned.

"Useless rookies, always messing up my work," continued the shadow Dad. "How does anyone expect me to solve cases when I'm too busy training the newbies? And then there's that girl…Arisato. Why the hell did I think it would be a good idea to hire a blind kid? Half the time, she's just in the way."

Nanako frowned. "That's not fair," she said. "Minako works really hard! She helps Dad solve lots of cases!"

"Of course she does," agreed Dad, resting a hand on Nanako's shoulder. "I'd be in trouble without her. Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? Where'd you get my clothes?"

The shadow Dad laughed, and it was Dad's laugh, only creepier. Nanako shuddered, and moved a little closer to the real Dad. "Nanako's figured it out," said the shadow. "She already knows, don't you, Nanako? I'm the real you. I'm all the things that you could be if only there weren't so many little responsibilities holding you back."

"That's crap," muttered Dad. "I don't know what you're trying to pull, but-!"

"Oh, and speaking of Nanako," continued the shadow, "Nobody ever seems to think about how hard it is to raise that girl all by myself. Here I am, trying to hold down a job, and raise a kid at the same time, with no help, and what thanks do I get? Just more and more work. The older she gets, the more trouble she is…and now that she's hanging out with all these older kids, she says all this miserable teenager stuff. What am I supposed to do? I'm no good at being a father…and I don't' understand girls. I'd rather be at work, anyway. It's easier to make sense of things, there. It's much easier than being at home."

Nanako felt as though she'd been struck. Easier being at work? Did dad really not like being at home with her? Was that really why he was always working such late hours? She looked up into the face of her real Dad, and saw that he was turning furious colors. "Daddy?" she whispered, using a name she hadn't called him since she was maybe two or three. "Is that…is that true?"

"No," he said quietly. "No, it's not true at all. I don't know what this is all about, Nanako, but you don't have to worry about stuff like that. I would never think of you that way."

"Oh, but I do think of you that way!" insisted the shadow. "I can't help it. It's the truth. Come on, you knew it all along, didn't you, Nanako? You knew the way I really felt. That's why you ran away from home, that time, when your Big Bro and I had to come searching for you. Because you know how much trouble it is for me just to have you around."

"Enough!" shouted Dad. "Leave her alone! Nanako's the best thing in my life. You have no idea what you're talking about. I've never thought of her that way! I've never thought any of these things, you're insane!"

Then, the shadow proved Dad's point. It let out an insane, terrifying burst of laughter that quickly got deeper and darker as the shadow Dad began to grow in size. Nanako hid her face against the real Dad's shirt, and then remembered that she couldn't do that. She had to be brave, she had to be willing to face this, even if Dad couldn't.

When she looked up again, the shadow Dad had turned into a giant, horrible policeman, with huge grasping arms and an ugly black hat pulled down over one yellow, glowing eye.

"Face it," growled the shadow. "I am you. For once in your life, face the truth!"

Then the shadow attacked.

**Fifteen - Christmas Day**

**Author's Note: **Today, we update both stories with action-packed battle scenes! Hooray! Everybody faces their inner self, and we're doing it all before I've even had MY morning coffee!

I know that some of you will be disappointed by this. I am sorry about that, but trust me; there is a method to my madness. It's all part of the long-term plan.

By the way, if you're reading both stories, please read this chapter first, before you go over and check out the **Messiah** update! It'll make more sense that way around.

**Fifteen – Christmas Day**

"Interesting," murmured Igor, as Yu explained to him the events that had transpired just before he'd found himself suddenly able, again, to enter the Velvet Room.

"I heard this voice," he said, "inside me. It was the same voice, the voice that spoke to me when I awoke to my persona ability for the first time. It said…I am thou, and thou art I." He stopped, and went quiet.

"And?" asked Yosuke. "And then what?"

Yu shrugged. "And then nothing," he murmured. "That's all I heard. I thought that maybe, somehow, my personas had come back, but, when I looked for them…they still weren't there. I don't know what it was, really, but it wasn't my imagination. Something did change." He looked helplessly at Igor, and Yosuke figured that was a lost cause. Igor never said anything useful,. Everything he said just ended up being more and more confusing.

"It is possible," mused Igor, "that a part of your persona ability remains. As the wild card, you had a great and immeasurable power, a power to summon every side of yourself, from the weakest, to the strongest. When you gave up your soul, perhaps some of what you retained was still imbued with that power. Perhaps something then, is left to you, after all…intriguing." He looked down his nose at Yu as though Yu was some sort of newly discovered species of stick insect.

"So, if that's true," interjected Yosuke, "then where are the personas? You say he's still got power, right? So, how come he can't use it?"

Igor shrugged. "It is unclear," he admitted. Yosuke blinked. Wait, had Igor juts confessed that there was something he really didn't know? "The power of the persona molds itself to the individual user," Igor continued. "Only the user himself can determine how to re-awaken any latent power that may not have been sacrificed to the Seal."

Yosuke thought that made as much sense as everything else, but for some reason, Yu just nodded. "I knew it," he muttered. "I knew that was it."

"Knew what?" asked Yosuke. "Wait, you knew this was going to happen?"

"No," insisted Yu, shaking his head in an uncharacteristic display of impatience. "It's like I was telling Minako the other day. The parts of ourselves that we lost…we have to figure out how to find them again. If we find them again, then we'll be able to get everything back. Well, not everything, maybe, but…something."

Yosuke opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Oh boy," he said finally, with a little sigh. "Now you're starting to talk like him…come on, work with me, partner, put it in words that a normal guy like me can understand."

For some reason, that made Yu grin. "You're not normal, Yosuke," he reminded him. "No, I have a feeling that you're going to end up being the key to all of this. You're gonna be a hero."

Closing his eyes, Yosuke muttered, "Oh, great. No pressure, right?"

Yu reached up and gave Yosuke a reassuring clap on the shoulder, and looked as though he was about to say something. Then, Yosuke heard the voice, and from the suddenly alert look on Yu's face, he knew that his partner had heard it, too.

"Hey, what happened to Dojima-san" asked Yosuke, aware that the question came far too late, but hoping beyond all hope that someone had a good answer for it, an answer that would make what he knew was about to happen completely impossible.

"He was with Nanako," murmured Yu. "I haven't seen them since-!"

The voice, which sounded so much like Dojima's, suddenly turned into a bellowing roar, and Yosuke heard Nanako shriek in terror from somewhere outside the Velvet Room. There was no more time for conversation. Yosuke turned and ran.

Just before he reached the door, he realized that Yu was frantically wheeling himself along behind. Turning on him, Yosuke shouted, "No, you stay here! You can't help them now, let me do this!"

"My family is out there!" insisted Yu angrily.

Yosuke bit his lip. There wasn't time for tact or grace…not that he'd even been great at either of those things anyway. "You don't have your personas, remember?" he said. "Even if you are hearing voices in your head. Dude, you'll only get killed if you go out there, and then this'll all have been for nothing. Don't be stupid, stay with Igor."

He saw the flinch, and knew that his words had hurt, just the way he'd been sure they would. Angry at himself, but knowing there wasn't any other option, Yosuke left Yu alone in the Velvet Room, and tore through the door to find Nanako and Dojima.

They were both standing stock still when he found them, staring up into the terrifying face of a huge and grotesque shadow policeman, who seemed to have only one yellow eye that was focused down hard on Dojima. Dojima had drawn his gun, and was firing round after round at the shadow, but it wasn't having any effect. The bullets just bounced off, or got absorbed. The shadow shook its head, almost like a disappointed father, and then reached out and smacked Dojima to the ground with the fat fingers of one giant hand.

"Ugh," grunted Dojima, sinking into a prone position.

"Daddy!" screamed Nanako, running over to his side.

For a moment, Yosuke wasn't sure what to do first. Should he check on Dojima? Grab Nanako and pull her to safety? There was only one of him here. What was he supposed to do next?

The shadow policeman, presumably the shadow of Dojima, glared down at him with a familiar expression, and with a start, Yosuke recognized it, somehow, as the same expression that Dojima wore when he'd been forced to get something done early in the morning, without having stopped to have his coffee.

"Takehaya-Susano-o," muttered Yosuke. His persona arrived just in time to deflect the blow that the shadow was swinging at him. Yosuke dodged around, and was just about to fling himself into the attack, when something happened to distract him.

From somewhere to his right, a creature leapt into being. It was a creature out of nightmares, a horrible black monster with coffins coming out of its head and neck, and a vicious looking sword in one hand. He'd seen this creature before somewhere, somewhere other than his creepiest dreams. It was the same creature that had shown up on that card that Nanako had found inside the Velvet Room.

"Nanako, no," he whispered, but it was far beyond too late.

He saw her standing, with anger and tears both streaming out of her eyes, clutching the persona card hard in one hand. "You leave my Dad alone!" she screamed at the policeman shadow. "I won't let you hurt him you big horrible thing! My Dad loves me…and I love him! You can't say anything to make that go away!"

Thanatos attacked. It looked, as far as Yosuke could tell, like an almighty attack. The shadow, unprepared for this ferocity, stumbled back, leaving itself open for Yosuke to follow up with a guest of powerful wind from his own persona. Once it had recovered, the shadow leveled its gun at Yosuke's head, but Nanako sent Thanatos flying at it with his sword outstretched, and the shadow suffered a wound on its arm.

Dojima was still lying there on the ground, his eyes shifting back and forth between Nanako and the shadow. Once, he tried to get up, and began to move himself over in front of Nanako, apparently to protect her. Yosuke shook his head violently.

"Knock it off," he hissed. "You can't do that; you'll only get in the way!"

He'd never spoken to Dojima like that before. The very idea of talking to the scary uncle of his best friend in such a commanding way sent a little chill down his spine, but this wasn't the real world. This was the TV world, and this was a matter of life and death. Even Dojima was going to have to accept that.

"Again! Do it again!" shouted Nanako, pointed at the policeman shadow. Dutifully, Thanatos again brutalized the shadow with an almighty blast, and then followed up with several quick and vicious strikes of its blade.

"Nanako," whispered Dojima, in a combination of awe and horror.

"Don't look," Yosuke advised him. "Just…just don't look at it."

It wasn't long before the battle was over. Nanako and Yosuke, in tandem, made reasonably quick work of the policeman, who obviously hadn't been expecting the wrath of a terrified and enraged Wild Card. The shadow eventually sank to its own knees, panting the same way that Dojima did when he'd been running too long after a perpetrator.

"Daddy," murmured Nanako. The battle light died out of her eyes, and she started shivering. She sunk on to her knees next to Dojima, and buried her face in his shirt, sniffling and sobbing loudly.

"Nanako-chan," began Yosuke, bending over to join the other two on the floor.

"I'm so sorry, Nanako," Dojima was mumbling. "I'm sorry that I wasn't a good enough father. I'm sorry that I ever thought those things about you. It's hard on me, too. I want to be there for you, and I always will, but…there are parts of me that wish there wasn't so much I had to worry about. Watching you grow up, watching you have to face things like…like this. Sometimes maybe I really do wish that it would all go away, and that I could go back to a world where there was less for me to worry about losing. It was like that for me before you and your mother came along."

"So…it's true?" whispered Nanako. "You really don't love me sometimes?"

"Nanako," insisted Dojima, "I'll always love you, all the time. Sometimes I just don't like the things that you've done to my world."

Yosuke looked up and watched the shadow nod just once. He expected it to turn into a card and float itself down into the back of Dojima's mind. He wasn't wrong, either. That's exactly what the newly awakened persona tried to do. Before it reached Dojima, though, the card suddenly stopped, wavered, and then evaporated, leaving nothing behind but a vague sense in Yosuke's mind that something hadn't gone quite right.

Dojima still had his arms around Nanako, and was patting her reassuringly, but there was a look on his face that Yosuke didn't like. Dojima's eyes were open wide, and he was wearing a sort of stunned, dazed expression, as though seeing Nanako for the first time, in a light that he never wanted to see her in again.

"What was that thing?" he asked, and his voice came out in a strangled sort of mutter.

"I…I think it's called Thanatos," said Yosuke. "It's Nanako's persona…she called it. The personas, they sort of sleep inside you, until you summon them, and then-!"

"That thing," interrupted Dojima, "came out of Nanako? It's…it's inside her?"

Not, thought Yosuke, until today. It hadn't belonged to her, it had belonged to someone else, maybe someone who'd hoped she'd use it to keep herself safe. Today, though, it really had become a part of her. Yosuke had seen it disappear again back inside Nanako's little soul.

That thing comes from death, he found himself thinking. It is death. It means death. Minako couldn't use it without inviting death inside of her.

Swallowing hard, he pushed himself back on to his feet. "We…we should go back," he managed to say, forcing himself to sound as normal as he could. "Yu's gonna be waiting for us…I hope."

**Shortly thereafter, inside the Velvet Room…**

"But…I don't get it," Yosuke heard Chie whisper, as the entire investigation team stood around in the Velvet Room and watched over Nanako and Dojima's recovery from their ordeal. "He beat it, right? So…doesn't he get a persona too, now?"

Yukiko shook her head. "Igor says that he can't have one," she reminded her friend. "He says that Dojima-san's mind is resisting it. He's fighting it off. I guess he's too skeptical to have something like a persona. Even if he had to admit to those things that the shadow said, he can't believe that something like a persona could really exist inside of him. Maybe it has something to do with what happens to you when you grow up."

"I don't know," said Chie. "Adachi-san has one, and he's an adult."

Naoto made a derogatory little noise in her throat. "In a manner of speaking, perhaps," she muttered, but left it at that.

Yu was still sitting in his chair, very close to where to Nanako and Dojima were sort of cowering against the Velvet Room wall. As Yosuke watched him, Yu's eyes suddenly met his, and for a brief moment, they exchanged a gaze that Yosuke couldn't help but force himself to look away from first.

**Sixteen - Christmas Day**

**Author's Note: **I am returned, triumphant! All of my exams have finally been submitted, my show closes tomorrow night, and the doctor says that I can stop taking at least three of my allergy medications, so it looks like I'm going to make it out of this one alive.

The theme for the next couple of chapters is unexpected alliances, since that seems to me to be a very good place to start the second half of this story. I should warn you all that I have done some serious re-plotting, and have changed several things about what I was planning to do with this story. There's a whole new notebook full of plans, so prepare to be surprised!

Thanks every so much for all of your patience, and I hope you enjoy what you read!

**Sixteen – Christmas Day**

After the ordeal in the Velvet Room, the entire collected members of SEES and the investigation team went tramping, un-triumphant, back to the Junes food court to regroup and grab something to eat that would hopefully help bolster their flagging spirits.

That, thought Yosuke, had definitely counted as a mission failure.

He had to admit to himself that he'd never actually believed in what he'd told the others; that bringing SEES in to help and consult would really be the solution to the problem of Yu and Minako's inner minds. Okay, so they'd somehow managed to get Yu back into the Velvet Room, but how? Why? What did that even mean? As far as Yosuke knew, they were just as far from sorting out the truth as they'd ever been before, and now the mysteries were only getting deeper and the ordeals more daunting, since he was sure that he'd probably now have to spend most of his time trying to keep Yu out of the Velvet Room, and thus out of harm's way.

He sighed, frowned, and turned his head to say something to Chie, who was sitting next to him at the table and chatting animatedly with Akihiko. As he shifted position, Yosuke noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that Nanako's attention was focused across the food court at something, and that she was looking pretty upset. He followed her gaze, and found himself staring at the hunched and dejected figure of Dojima, sitting alone at a far table, staring blankly down into a bowl of something he hadn't touched.

Jeez, thought Yosuke. Like we really needed to drag someone else into this mess.

He was just turning back to say something vaguely comforting to Nanako when someone else pulled a chair out from the table and starting crossing over to Dojima. Yosuke scowled as he watched Junpei make his way over to the older man's table. Crap, he thought, seriously, what the hell was that guy up to? Like he really needed to get involved in this one…he'd probably just end up making it worse.

Then again, reflected Yosuke, with a hint of malice that he wasn't too sure he was proud of, it might be kinda fun to watch Junpei getting reamed out by Dojima.

"Who are you?" asked Dojima blankly, as Junpei sat down in a chair across from him.

Junpei blinked in surprise. "Wait, what? What do you mean, who am…come on, Dojima-san, I'm at the station like every other day. All the time. We've even…aw, forget it, I guess it doesn't matter." He sighed. "Name's Iori. I'm a friend of Minako's, remember? I work for old man Daidara."

"Oh," mumbled Dojima. "Right." Glancing down at his bowl again, he pushed it aside. "What do you want?"

"How you feeling?" asked Junpei.

Yosuke blinked. There was a lot of unexpected sensitivity coming from that guy. He should have been impressed, but for some reason, he just felt annoyed. After all, his conscience reminded him, he should have been the one who was asking after Dojima's health. If anyone knew about the side-effects of meeting a shadow self, it was Yosuke. He should have been on that long before Junpei got to it. He felt his face flush hot under the embarrassment of watching his sworn enemy show more tact and care than he'd managed to pull out of himself.

"I'm fine," Dojima grunted.

"Yeah?" asked Junpei. "Well, uh, that's good. Because, see, Yosuke and Minako told me that sometimes, after you run into a shadow like that, and all, it kinda sucks. Feels like shit, actually, and makes you real tired and sluggish. Guess you're a little stronger than the rest of us…probably because you're older, and you're more of a-!"

Dojima mumbled something under his breath, and just for a moment, Yosuke thought he saw Dojima sway forward as though he was going to plant face-first right into the table. Junpei's hand shot out and caught him by the shoulder to push him upright again.

"Damn," muttered Junpei, shaking his head. "It's just like Minako says…you're too stubborn for your own good. The hell would it hurt you say you're feeling sick? Maybe one of the guys can help get you home. I've even got my car here, and-!"

"I'm fine," growled Dojima, shaking his head emphatically, and then wincing slightly under the pain that gesture apparently caused. "I can't leave Nanako here alone. What if that 'shadow' thing tries to…ugh." He bit down hard on his lip, and crumpled into the chair again.

Standing up, Junpei walked around until he was right next to Dojima's chair. Without waiting for or asking for permission, he got an arm under Dojima's arm, and started hauling the older man on to his feet.

"I'm gonna tell you something right now, sir," he began, as he and Dojima began walking haltingly off towards the parking lot. "All of this bravado and shit? It's not gonna do you any good. This shadow-fighting stuff doesn't get any easier, so you'd better get used to pacing yourself now, or you're gonna be dead, and then it's gonna be all of us looking after Nanako."

Unexpectedly, Dojima snorted out a laugh. "Well, at least you're honest," he mumbled, before their voices trailed off and they disappeared around the corner.

Yosuke followed them with his eyes until they were totally out of sight, feeling conflicted and uncertain. There was a part of him, an irrelevant and malicious part that was insisting he following after them to make sure that Junpei didn't have any nefarious plans when it came to Dojima. There was no reason, of course, for Yosuke to assume that Junpei was planning to do anything, but what if he was wrong? A good leader was the sort of person who could imagine and plan for all of the contingencies. That was always something that Yu had been able to do. It was part of what made him so great in a fight.

"That was an unexpected scene, indeed…don't you think so, Yosuke-senpai?" asked a familiar, soft-spoken voice from somewhere at Yosuke's elbow. He turned around to see that Naoto had sat down in the vacant seat just next to him, and was staring off in the direction that Junpei and Dojima had gone as well.

"Yeah…" agreed Yosuke. "You can say that again."

"Perhaps it is for the best," continued Naoto thoughtfully, "that we allow others, such as Junpei-san, to look after those of our comrades who have suffered through this ordeal. There are, at the moment, more pressing tasks on which we should be focusing the majority of our attention."

Yosuke looked around the food court, and saw that Nanako was deep in conversation with Ken Amada, and that she was giving him a hesitant sort of smile that made it look as though he was at least in the process of cheering her up. Yu's chair was parked in between Yukari and Rise, who looked like they were arguing about something that had Yu himself looking amused.

A good leader, thought Yosuke, was in touch with his whole team, and knew exactly what to do and say in order to raise their spirits and get them back in the game. Sitting there, watching his friends turn to others for help gave him a selfish and unpleasant feeling of being inadequate that had come to be part of Yosuke's daily bread over the past few weeks. At least, he reflected miserably, he was starting to get used to it.

"A resume," intoned Naoto patiently, through and around Yosuke's private thoughts, "of the new developments in the case thus far would likely give us a better insight into the problems were are just now beginning to face. Perhaps you would allow me to raddress them for you?"

"Uh, sure." Yosuke nodded. Naoto always used an insanely large number of big, hundred-dollar words. "Go ahead, what have we got?"

"Well," began Naoto slowly. "It seems, after the confrontation that you witnessed between Dojima-san and his shadow that it is, in fact possible for an individual to meet and to accept his or her shadow self without having that shadow self convert into the form of a persona. As this is the first instance we have come across where the shadow self does not either become a persona, or instead overcome and murder the host, it may be important for us to keep in mind that there are, apparently, other undiscovered possibilities where shadows and personas are concerned."

Yosuke nodded again. She was right, he knew. Even he'd been subconsciously aware that they probably would never know everything there was to know about shadows and personas. Still, even the assumptions they'd made thus far had apparently been wrong, and she was right to draw his attention o it.

"Got it," he said. "What else?"

Naoto went on. "Also," she reminded him, "we are faced with the unexpected discovery that our own Yu Narukami, former investigation team leader, can now re-enter the Velvet Room as he was unable to do directly after the loss of his persona. This development begs the question as to what it is that has changed? His new ability must come from somewhere, and perhaps if we were to discover what the cause is of that ability, we'd be one step closer to a solution that would allow us to seal the door to his and Minako's minds. Getting Minako's opinion on the subject would hardly be amiss, although I confess that will be impossible until we can be sure that Dojima san will stay out of the Velvet Room long enough for us to permit Adachi to return."

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke. "Yeah, don't worry, I've been thinking about that every since we came out here. That has to be the key, right? I mean, the key to fixing Yu's mind up. Something we're doing is working, something is making a difference. Otherwise, he wouldn't be getting his powers back, right? That doesn't sound so crazy in my head."

"It is not crazy at all," agreed Naoto. "I think your achievements thus far are worthy of some commendation, especially since, without your efforts, I am certain that we'd never have made the progress which we are finally beginning to see in our results, even if they are somewhat enigmatic."

It took Yosuke a moment to dissect that one. When he finally did, he felt himself smile.

"Hey," he said, working off of a hunch. "We didn't really need to go over any of that stuff. I mean, we both already know what happened, and what we have to do. You're just trying to cheer me up, aren't you?"

Naoto looked slightly put off, and a little embarrassed. "It…is possible that those were my intentions," she murmured.

Yosuke laughed.

**Seventeen - December 26**

**Author's Note: **I am going to focus on this story for a couple of updates, so that I can catch it up with **Messiah** and line up the two timelines again. **Messiah** will actually be ending in a few chapters, and it can't do that until some things happen in **Piecekeeping**, so I have to even the two of them out. Not that I'm complaining, I'm excited about some things that I have in store for this story…and I'm looking forward to using some more of Naoto, which I know I haven't done much of in the past.

Please be warned! I will be spending some time today and tomorrow deleting some stories and re-publishing them in collections, to try and make my one-shots and companion pieces easier to find and follow. I'll try to make this as painless a process as possible, but I learned while creating **Disenchanted – The Complete Cho Yanase Continuity** that every time I republish a collection, you all get a hundred "Ari Moriarty updated!" emails in rapid succession. I'm very sorry about that; really, I will make it quick. Thank you for bearing with me, and I hope you enjoy what you read!

**Seventeen – December 26**

After school the next day, Nanako started walking home. About halfway down the familiar street, she found Ken, looking uncomfortable and uncertain as he people that went by.

"Oh, Nanako-chan!" he said as she approached, sounding relieved. "Uh, how was school?"

"Fine, thank you very much," answered Nanako politely. "Um…did you come to walk me home?"

"Yes." Ken nodded, shuffling his feet a bit. "If…if that's okay. Actually, um, Mitsuru-senpai sent me to pick you up from school."

Nanako wrinkled her nose in confusion. "She…sent you? Um…why?"

For some reason, that made Ken look even more uncomfortable. "I think, uh…she was worried that a girl your age shouldn't be walking home alone. Actually, I think she has some other changes in mind as well. We…we should go, okay?"

As Ken turned around and began walking quickly back towards Nanako's home, Nanako struggled on her small legs to keep up. "Wait!" she called. "Hey, slow down! What are you talking about? I always walk home by myself; I'm more than old enough. And what do you mean, 'other changes?'"'

"You'll see, I guess," mumbled Ken.

It didn't take them very long to get back to the Dojima residence, and as soon as they got there, Ken planted himself firmly between Nanako and the front door.

"I'm sorry," he told her, sounding like he really meant it. "This…this wasn't my idea."

Nanako was starting to get really worried. Ken stepped aside, and she pulled the door open, not sure what exactly she should be expecting.

There was a lot of bustle and noise inside the house, which was very unusual especially considering that Dad was always at work at this time of day, and that Big Bro was probably either upstairs by himself, or outside with his friends. Nanako could hear several different voices, all of them female. She barely recognized any of them.

"Hello?" called Nanako, walking inside and looking around. "Um…who's here? Do we have company?"

Then, she saw the persona, and squeaked in surprise. The persona was large, with mechanical looking blue and silver wings, wearing something that looked like a combination of battle armor and a beautiful fairy ballgown. Nanako had definitely never seen this one before, and, after all, it didn't make sense, because personas didn't exist outside of the TV world. Big Bro had had told her that, and so had Yosuke, and Chie, and Yukiko, and…

"Oh, Nanako-chan," murmured Fuuka, stepping out from behind the persona. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were home. Nanako, this is Juno." She gestured to the persona. "She's my persona."

Nanako's eyes went wide with a combination of awe and admiration. "Oh, wow…" she whispered. "Wow, how do you do that?"

"Hmm?" Fuuka looked startled. "How do I do…oh, you mean, how do I summon my persona outside of the TV?" She shrugged. "It's…not clear. As far as we have been able to tell, our personas aren't exactly the same as yours. They're all the same kind of creature, but…their powers are different. Does that make sense?"

Nanako wasn't entirely sure that it did, and she was just thinking it over when a sharp, commanding feminine voice broke through her thoughts.

"Yamagishi!" called someone from inside the kitchen. "What are you doing out there, daydreaming? We need your assistance, if you would be so kind."

Fuuka winced. "Excuse me," she mumbled, before disappearing back into the kitchen. Curious and slightly concerned, Nanako followed her in, to see Yukari hunched over and diligently dusting off the counter tops, while Mitsuru loomed over her shoulder.

"Oh!" said Nanako.

Both Yukari and Mitsuru turned around when she spoke. "Ah, Nanako-chan, you're home," remarked Mitsuru. "Excellent. Have you brought Amada with you?"

"Amada…" Nanako had to think about that for a moment. "Oh, Ken-san? Yes, he came and helped me walk back from the bus stop. Um…" She wanted to say that really, she could have done it by herself, but Nanako was aware that Mitsuru had probably been trying to help. Besides, the masterful glint in the red-haired woman's eye was a little bit scary. Somehow, Nanako didn't feel too good about the idea of challenging her to a battle of wills.

"Thank you," she said instead. "It was…very kind of you to think of me like that."

Mitsuru nodded approvingly. "You're quite welcome," she said. Mitsuru glanced over at Yukari, who had looked up and stopped dusting when Nanako had walked in. Under the force of Mitsuru's gaze, Yukari ducked her head down again and began dusting at double-speed.

"What are you doing?" asked Nanako, before she'd managed to stop herself and think of a slightly more polite way to phrase the question.

Luckily for her, Mitsuru didn't seem to notice the rudeness. "We are doing to this place what really should have been done months ago," she informed Nanako, with a little sniff of distaste. "This entire home needs a thorough cleaning, dusting, sweeping, and re-organization…actually, Nanako-chan, I'm impressed that you've survived living here so long. Having to reside with the likes of two men, neither of which seem to be able to pick up after themselves is deplorable even to think of…no wonder this home has become so unliveable. Men never seem to have the requisite self-care skills."

Nanako flushed pink. "I do the cleaning at home," she mumbled. "It's my job."

For a moment, Mitsuru opened her mouth, then closed it again, looking slightly flustered. Nanako was almost certain that she heard Yukari stifle a laugh.

"It's fine, Nanako, really," insisted Yukari, coming away from the counter to place a protective hand on Nanako's shoulder. "What senpai really meant was…"

**Meanwhile, at the Inaba shopping district…**

Yosuke and Naoto were walking towards Junes together in contemplative silence. It was time for Yosuke's afternoon shift to start, and he'd stopped into the bookstore on his way to work. Naoto had been there, arguing with the shopkeeper about some sort of special edition novel she'd tried to order. Yosuke had pulled her away with some excuse, and as they'd walked out of the store, the shopkeeper had given him a very relieved and grateful look.

"Hey, Naoto," Yosuke said. "You're really good at solving mysteries, right?"

Naoto gave him a slightly amused glance. "There have been those that have said so, certainly," she murmured, apparently trying to sound modest, and only partially succeeding.

"So…if this was one of your mysteries," Yosuke went on, frowning, "then what would the next step be? I mean, there's gotta be something you do next, once you've got a bunch of clues and have to start putting them together, right?" Yosuke was none too eager to admit that, even after their successful solution of the Inaba murder mystery years ago, he still didn't really consider himself detective material. Still, after the conversation they'd had the day before, it sounded to him as though Naoto, at least, wasn't laughing at him in the back of her mind. Maybe she'd be able to help him figure out just exactly what a leader was supposed to do next.

"Hmm," said Naoto, apparently giving his question the serious thought that he only hoped it deserved. "Well, once the clues have been collected, then it's time for the deductive processes to begin. We must commence with piecing the fragments together and attempting to form them into a cohesive solution."

"Yeah," mumbled Yosuke. "And…what if we don't know how to do that?"

"Then," replied Naoto almost immediately, "we must experiment with multiple possibilities until we locate the one that brings us closest to the solution."

Yosuke blinked at her, not entirely certain what she was talking about. Naoto sighed.

"Trial and error," she clarified. "You're asking me how to go about finding a cure for Yu's injuries, are you not?"

"Uh, yeah, pretty much," agreed Yosuke.

"Then," continued Naoto, "we must consider what exactly it is that Igor told you. As I recall, you informed us that Igor said that Yu's power could only be re-awakened by some act that Yu would himself would have to discover on his own. There is, therefore, something specific and particular that Yu can do to re-awaken his personas, correct?"

Yosuke nodded. "Sounds right," he said.

"So," insisted Naoto, "we must use what we have learned about personas so far to come up with a series of tasks that Yu might be able to perform, each of which might potentially re-awaken his powers. At this point, without any further information, that's the best I think we can do."

Yosuke wasn't sure he liked the sound of that at all. "So…we're gonna use him as a kind of guinea pig? Just…experiment on him till we figure out what works and what doesn't?"

Naoto didn't look any happier than Yosuke did, but she shrugged. "You asked me for my advice," she told him. "I gave it. You have no obligation to comply with my suggestions."

Unfortunately, Naoto was the only one who'd made any actual suggestions since the SEES team had arrived in Inaba days before. It did make some sense after all, thought Yosuke. If what Igor had said was true, and if they were reading it the right way, then there were pieces of Yu that hadn't been discovered yet, pieces that would probably be able to come together and make him whole. If that was the case for him, then it was probably also the case for Minako.

"I'm game," said Yosuke eventually. "Hey, at this point I'll try anything. I'm pretty sure Yu will be on board, too, especially if it means solving this thing before Nanako-chan and Dojima-san get any more involved in it. So, uh…what do you think we should try first?"

Again, it looked as though Naoto had to spend some time thinking about it.

**Eighteen - December 26**

**Eighteen – December 26**

Yosuke and Naoto found Yu standing around in the grocery department at Junes, looking bored and lost in thought.

"Hey," said Yosuke, clapping him on the shoulder to jolt him out of his daydream. "Great, you're just the guy we were looking for!"

"Uh, wait, what?" Yu frowned. "I'm…not sure I Iike the sound of that."

Naoto smiled. "There is no need for concern. Yosuke-senpai and I were simply discussing the ways in which we might successfully cure you of your mental illness."

Yosuke winced. "Mental illness? That's…kind of a harsh way of putting it."

Shrugging, Yu shook his head. "She's…not wrong," he admitted. "I suppose, when it comes down it, that's really what this is…"

"Indeed," agreed Naoto, nodding emphatically., "The more willing we are to accept the truth for what it is, the easier it will be for us to find a solution to the problem. Now, Yu-senpai." She sat down on corner of one of the produce displays, and crossed her arms over her chest, biting her lip in thought. "Do you remember exactly what happened right before you discovered that you were again able to enter the Velvet Room?"

Now it was Yu's turn to do some difficult thinking. "No, I don't think that I…" He paused, glancing at Yosuke for help. Yosuke just gave him an apologetic look.

"Okay," muttered Yu, taking a deep breath. "Right before I went into the TV, I, uh…oh, I was talking to uncle Dojima in the electronics department."

Naoto nodded encouragingly. "What were you two talking about?"

"Nanako, I think," replied Yu. "Oh, and me. He was worried about something happening to Nanako and me in the TV world, and I promised him that I wouldn't let anything bad like that happen."

Suddenly, Naoto didn't look very enthusiastic anymore. Yosuke opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, but Yu started speaking again before Yosuke had the chance.

"There were voices in my head," he was saying, "familiar voices…they said, um..'I am thou and thou art I…' something like that. It sounded like the same thing that happened every time I'd make a new social link or be able to summon a new kind of persona."

"I see," murmured Naoto, looking grave.

Yosuke glanced back and forth between her and Yu for a moment. "Wait, you see what?" he asked. "This is good, right? I mean, if Yu's hearing his personas in his head again, then we're probably even closer to figuring this out than we thought! This is a good thing…isn't it?"

Yu and Yosuke both looked at Naoto, who was now shaking her head and staring at the floor.

"You were able to enter the Velvet Room again after that conversation with Dojima-san," she said. "Or rather, after a promise that you made to Dojima-san concerning the safety or yourself and Nanako-chan, correct?"

"That's what I said," agreed Yu.

"Then…" Naoto paused for a moment, looking uncertain. "It seems to me that the only way to re-awaken your powers is to find a way to keep that promise. Perhaps I am mistaken, and that would be…something of a relief, but perhaps the way in which you are to cure your mental injuries is to prove yourself to Dojima-san, and thus to save yourself and Nanako-chan from imminent danger."

"Still good," insisted Yosuke. "Saving's good."

"Yes," murmured Naoto, "but in order to complete our experiment, as it were, it seems that we will have to place either Nanako-chan or Yu-senpai in the sort of danger that he might be able to protect them from. That…may be the solution, unfortunately, to the entire problem."

There was a moment of silence, during which Yosuke and Yu stared at each other, Naoto made a point of not looking anyone in the eye.

"No," said Yu firmy. "Not Nanako. No way."

"Yeah, not a chance," agreed Yosuke. "I mean, that's crazy, the poor kid's been in plenty of danger since she started with her own personas, and stuff. You mean, she has to face something even worse?"

"I won't do it," announced Yu. "It's not an option."

Naoto sighed. "I was sure that you would say that," she informed him. "I…commend your loyalty to Nanako-chan, and quite frankly I can't reasonably condone endangering her myself, but…I fear that there may be no other way to cure you."

Yu's face hardened into familiar, determined lines that made something like pride and trepidation swell up at the same time in Yosuke's heart.

"Then that's it," said Yu quietly. "There is no solution. That's the way it'll have to be."

"Well," began Naoto thoughtfully, "As I said before, perhaps there is one other way…"

**Meanwhile, at the Dojima residence…**

"Yamagishi," instructed Mitsuru., "please have Juno scan the premises of the Dojima estate."

"Estate? Hardly," snorted Yukari, but Mitsuru completely ignored her.

"Um…okay," mumbled Fuuka. "But…scan it for what, senpai?"

"Anything," snapped Mitsuru. "Rodents, pests, large piles of debris…anything."

Yukari and Fuuka exchanged a knowing look.

"Senpai," began Yukari carefully, "You've…never actually cleaned anything before, have you? I mean, I know that you've got maids at home, so…"

"And what exactly is your point?" demanded Mitsuru imperiously.

Nanako would have backed off, if Mitsuru had made that scary face at her. Yukari, on the other hand, seemed totally unphased. Wow, thought Nanako, genuinely impressed. Yukari was really cool!

"Well," continued Yukari, "You don't actually have to use a persona to find stuff like that. I mean…nobody else does. Personas are pretty much good for fighting shadows, and…well, for figuring stuff out about shadows. For rats and mice, you use traps, and you don't need to if there aren't any signs of them. Usually rats and mice leave droppings, and little piles of-!"

"And," interrupted Fuuka eagerly, "We haven't found anything like that while we've been here, so I don't think there's any need to-!"

"We must be exceptionally thorough," barked Mitsuru, driving both of the other two women back into patient silence. "There are children living here, and children require a safe and clean environment unlike the one we found when we entered this home for the first time. I do not think that I am amiss in assuming…

"Excuse me," said Nanako, as loudly and boldly as she could. "But…does my dad know that you're here?"

That made even Mitsuru blink and close her mouth for a moment.

"Because," added Nanako, "I don't think he'd be too happy if he found out that some other people he didn't know where messing around in house and with his kitchen, so…maybe you should leave."

For a moment, everyone stared at Nanako. Out of the corner of her eye, Nanako was aware of Ken gazing at her with something that looked almost like admiration in his eyes.

Then, mercifully, Mitsuru's phone rang.

"Hello?" she asked, bringing it to her ear. Someone said a few unintelligible words on the other end, and Mitsuru nodded to herself as she listened. "Understood," she said eventually, before hanging up the phone and placing it back into her pocket.

"Who was that?" asked Yukari.

"Shirogane," Mitsuru informed her. "We have new instructions."

"Instructions?" asked Fuuka. "What kind of instructions?"

Nanako didn't think that Mitsuru seemed like the sort of woman who would be too eager to follow "instructions." As far as Nanako could tell, Mitsuru was the one who made the rules, not the one who listened to them.

"We are to hold our post," began Mitsuru, "until we hear otherwise from either Hanamura, Shirogane, or Narukami. For the sake of the investigation, under no circumstances are we to allow-!"

She stopped talking suddenly as they all heard the sound of the front door opening. Dad's familiar footsteps clomped their way across the floor until he appeared in the kitchen, looking confused and tired.

"What…what are you all doing here?" he asked wearily. "What's going on?"

Nanako and Ken exchanged a look.

"Welcome home, Dad," murmured Nanako, unsure of what else she could possibly say.

**Meanwhile, inside the TV world...**

"No, seriously, I don't like this at all," complained Yosuke, for what was probably the third or fourth time since they'd enter the TV.

He and Naoto were standing just inside the Velvet Room door, peering out at the landscape of the TV world beyond. A few feet in front of them, just far enough away to be unreachable, Yu was sitting in his wheelchair, hands clenching and unclenching nervously in his lap as all three of them waited for…something.

"He's totally vulnerable out there!" insisted Yosuke. "I mean, he's got no way to defend himself, or anything! What are we gonna do if something comes out and attacks? He's like a sitting duck! What kind of friends does that make us?"

Naoto didn't look too much happier than Yosuke did, although she was clearly trying to put a bold face on the situation. "That's exactly what we are hoping will happen," she reminded him. "It seems to me as though the only way for Yu-senpai to regain his powers is for him to keep his promise to Dojima-san, and therefore to prevent either him or Nanako-chan from falling victim to any serious harm. Placing Nanako-chan in danger is out of the question, and so we have no choice but to wait and see if Yu himself can muster the ability to protect himself in a moment of dire need."

"Yeah," muttered Yosuke, "but what if we're wrong? What if he can't?"

Naoto sighed. "In that case," she assured him, "then we will step in before the situation devolves beyond our control. That's why we are watching here, is it not? To make sure that nothing terrible actually happens."

Yosuke gritted his teeth to keep himself from saying something nasty. Naoto had, of course, a really good point. She usually did. When she'd proposed the idea to Yu, he'd been eager to give it a try, and before Yosuke had really had time to think things through, they'd been hoisting Yu's chair through the TV set.

There were a lot of problems with what was going on right now, thought Yosuke. He was conflicted in more than just a few ways. A good leader, he knew, was willing to try anything to get the job done, and a good leader would take risks for the sake of his team. Yu was a good leader, and Yu was taking a huge risk.

Yosuke, however, just for the moment, suddenly found that he didn't give a shit about leadership or anything like that. Right now, he wanted to be a good friend, and there was no way in hell that a good friend would let something like this go down, and just stand by to watch.

"Hey, come on," he began. "Hasn't this gone on for long enough? Look, nothing's coming, so why don't we just-!"

A sound, which was something like a cross between a snarl and a groan, erupted from somewhere behind Yu's head. Yu, Naoto, and Yosuke all turned around to watch as something huge, dark, and dangerous looking lumbered out and glared down at Yu's immobile form with hungry, yellow eyes.

"Ah," murmured Naoto, her voice coming out just a little bit shakier than Yosuke had hoped it would. "Well, then...this will be the test."

"No way," muttered Yosuke, as the shadow bore down on Yu. "No way, this…this is way too much."

**Nineteen - December 26**

**Nineteen – December 26**

"Oh, um, Dojima-san" stammered Yukari, glancing over at Mitsuru as though expecting her to intervene.

Mitsuru, however, much to Nanako's surprise, looked at something of a loss for words. Glancing back and forth between Mitsuru and Dad, Nanako realized that there was definitely something about them that felt and seemed the same. She wasn't sure entirely what it it was, but it probably had something to do with that scary, determined look that they could both get on their faces when they were sure that they were right about something. She'd seen that look from Dad more than a million times, and she'd seen it just now when Mitsuru had been lecturing her on kitchen cleanliness. Maybe, thought Nanako, just maybe, Mitsuru and Dad would actually like each other, if given half a chance. Then again, she reflected, seeing the very worried look that had appeared on Ken's face, maybe it was better if she didn't wait long enough to find out.

Whatever the case may have been, Nanako decided, it was probably a good time for her to step in and prevent things from getting out of control. That was definitely her job when Big Bro wasn't around, and she wasn't sure where he was, so…

"Um, isn't it nice, Dad?" asked Nanako, putting on her sweetest and most positive smile. "Mitsuru-san, Yukari-san, and Fuuka-san are helping me clean the kitchen! Cleaning goes faster with more people, right?"

Yukari blinked at Nanako, and opened her mouth silently as though she wasn't sure what to say next.

"Wow, Nanako-chan," murmured Ken, looking genuinely impressed.

Dad frowned at Mitsuru and Yukari, then shrugged. Fuuka's persona, Nanako noticed, had quietly disappeared sometime in the last few minutes.

"Okay," said Dad. "Uh…then, thanks, I guess. It's hard on Nanako, having to do all the chores by herself. Nice of you ladies to help out."

Dad's gaze fell on Ken for a moment, and all of a sudden Dad was glaring again, and Ken took a step back, almost bumping into Fuuka in the process.

"Who are you?" asked Dad sharply.

Ken swallowed. "K-ken Amada, sir," he stammered. "I'm…I'm a friend of Minako's, and…" he shot a glance at Nanako, then added, in a slightly more confident voice, "of Nanako's."

Dad's glare didn't soften even a little bit. In fact, thought Nanako, it may have gotten even meaner.

"Fine," muttered Dad after a long, awkward moment. "Just…keep your hands where I can see them, understand? She's only nine."

Ken's face turned white. "Uh…wh-what are you talking about?" he squeaked.

Yukari, for some reason that Nanako didn't quite understand, suddenly dissolved into a fit of laughter that she ineffectively tried to hide by covering her mouth one hand shaking hand.

"Um," asked Nanako, turning to Fuuka for some sort of guidance. "What's going on?"

Fuuka just shook her head. "He's a good father," was all she said, gesturing in Dad's direction.

Nanako was just about to ask more questions when Mitsuru's cell phone rang again, and everyone stopped to watch as she pulled it out and held it to her ear

"Hello? Ah, Shirogane-kun, this is…excuse me? What?"

Nanako didn't have to hear what Naoto was saying on the other end. She couldn't make out the words, but for some reason Naoto was shouting and panicky. That scared Nanako more than any words would have been able to do. Naoto did not shout, and was never, ever panicky. Something must be horribly wrong.

"Yes. Yes. I understand," said Mitsuru curtly, before quickly hanging up the phone and shoving it back into her pocket

"What's happening?" asked Nanako. She had a terrible, sinking feeling in her chest, and was suddenly very anxious to know where Big Bro was right now. Had he been with Naoto? She didn't think so, but she wasn't sure. She didn't know where he was. "Is it Big Bro?" she insisted. "Is he in trouble? Where's Yosuke?" Yosuke, she knew, would come up with a plan. He'd figure something out, because he was the leader, and he was Big Bro's best. Best friends looked out for each other.

So, said a little voice in the back of her mind, do families. Families were supposed to help and protect each other, but she hadn't even called Big Bro all day. He was hurt, and couldn't walk, and she was supposed to be his family, but she didn't even know where he was.

"We're needed in the TV world," barked Mitsuru, as Yukari, Fuuka and Ken all headed at the same time for the door. "Yamagishi, you are to go instantly to the Junes food court, locate Kujikawa and head for the Velvet Room. Takeba, you're with me. Amada, please accompany Nanako-chan to the-!"

"Nanako isn't going," growled Dad.

Everyone stopped in their tracks and turned to stare at him.

"It is true," murmured Mitsuru, "that I have not been very clear. Narukami is in danger. He has encountered an unexpectedly large and powerful shadow in the TV world. Hanamura and Shirogane are with him, but there is some concern that the two of them alone will be insufficient to defeat or ward off the enemy. Our presence is needed, immediately. It is not a matter for argument."

That, as far as Nanako was concerned, was that, and she and Ken again started off together for the door.

"I said you're not going, Nanako, called Dojima. "Come back here. Right now."

Nanako turned around in genuine surprise, to find Dad standing and staring at her with a strange and very scary look on his face. There was something wrong with him, something in his eyes that she hadn't' seen in them before. He looked distant, lost, and angry at the same time, and there something about the way he was looking at her that made her feel like he wasn't seeing her at all, but that he was looking right through her and seeing someone or something else that wasn't really there.

"Dojima-san," murmured Fuuka. "Yu's in danger…you don't understand."

"I understand," muttered Dad. "I understand that I don't want to lose my whole family to this shadow crap. Yu's a grown man, he can make his own decisions, and there isn't shit that I can do about it, but…Nanako's just a kid. I'm not gonna let her throw herself away like he's gonna do."

"But what about Big Bro?" asked Nanako incredulously. "He needs our help! I'm a good persona user, I've got lots of powers! I can save him! I know I can, Dad! I'm good at magic!"

"I don't care," replied Dojima, looking away. "You're too young."

Nanako tried to catch Dad's eye again, but he wouldn't look at her, no matter what she did. Mitsuru, Fuuka, Yukari and Ken were all staring at them, holding their breath as though waiting for something to explode. Nanako thought about Big Bro, waiting for her to come and rescue him, and realized that they were wasting a lot of time. Why didn't Dad get it? Why was Dad turning this into some sort of stupid parent thing? It wasn't time for a stupid parent thing, this was serious! Big Bro could die!"

"You don't care about Big Bro," Nanako mumbled, with angry, disappointed tears starting to well up in her eyes. "You don't love him anymore…"

"Nanako-chan," began Dad, but Nanako didn't want to hear it. She was getting more and more furious by the minute, unable to stomach the idea that her own father didn't care about his family the way she'd always thought he was supposed to.

Turning on her heel, she rushed towards the door, and heard Ken's footsteps behind her, hurrying to keep up. Just before opening the door and running out into the street, Nanako looked back over her shoulder and glared at her Dad with a horrible feeling of awful disappointment growing inside of her by the minute.

"I hate you," she told him. Then she and Ken were gone.

**Meanwhile, just outside the Velvet Room…**

"What the hell is up with this thing?" shouted Yosuke, as he and Naoto did their best to form a protective ring around Yu's chair. "Is it just me, or are the shadows getting bigger and badder every time we have to kill one? I mean, this is just nuts…I thought only the Velvet Room shadows were this scary looking."

He dodged to one side as the massive shadow slashed at him with one of its four sets of claws.

"Megidolaon" announced Naoto in that clear, commanding voice she had whenever things got out of control. Yamato-Takeru performed the almighty attack, and Yosuke was pretty sure that the attack hit, at least a little bit, although the giant shadow only flinched for a moment and then lunged forward into a fresh attack, apparently not nearly injured enough to be down for the count.

"Shit," muttered Yosuke. "What are we gonna do?"

"The others are on their way," Naoto informed him, a bit breathlessly. "I have spoken to Mitsuru-senpai and to Rise-chan, and I am certain that-!'

Footsteps pounded against the ground behind them, and Yosuke swung around just long enough to see Chie, Teddie, Kanji, and Rise running towards them through the open Velvet Room door.

"Oh my god!" breathed Rise. "What is that thing?"

"You tell me!" shouted Yosuke, hurling himself backwards before launching his best attempt at an attack. "And somebody get Yu out of here!"

As Yosuke hurled himself forward into his best attempt at a physical attack, Chie ran around him and grabbed Yu's chair, pushing it away again and out of harm's way. Yosuke risked a glance over his shoulder in order to watch the two of them leave, and the farther away Yu and Chie got from the shadow, the better and better he found himself feeling.

"Wait!" Yu was saying, as he and Chie left the scene. "What about Yosuke and the others?"

"Don't worry about them, they'll be fine," Chie assured him.

For just a moment, Yosuke and Yu's eyes met, and Yu bit his lip in frustration. Yosuke just nodded at him, trying to reassure him that he had this, and that he knew what the next step was. In reality, he didn't, but that didn't matter. He'd already gotten his partner out of harm's way. Now he had to focus on figuring out how to get the rest of them out of there as alive and in as few pieces as possible.

"Oh!" called Rise, apparently having finished her scan of the shadow. "No, it's okay! This one's easy! It's weak to fire!"

Fire, thought Yosuke. Great All they'd have to do, then, was…

"Where the hell is Yukiko?" he asked.

There were more footsteps sounding from the direction of the Velvet Room, and then SEES appeared, led by Mitsuru with sword in hand and eyes flashing. Junpei was there too, and Yosuke didn't even have a chance to register any feelings about that before Junpei had rushed up alongside Yosuke, and was bringing his evoker up to his head.

"Don't worry about it," Junpei assured them. "I got this."

Junpei's persona shot out of him, and unleashed an inferno of flames that engulfed the shadow and singed it ruthlessly. Yosuke held his breath, hoping it would go down, but when the flames dissipated again, the shadow was still standing. It had clearly been hurt, although not nearly badly enough. Now, it just looked angry.

"Crap," muttered Yosuke.

"Aw, come on!" shouted Junpei. "I thought you said it was weak to fire!"

"I did!" insisted Rise. "Fire's the only thing that will work on it, but um…I guess you're going to have to do better than that! Don't you have anything stronger?"

"Stronger?" shouted Junpei. "Seriously? 'Something stronger,' says the girl whose persona can't even freaking fight!'"

"Hey!'" shrieked Rise angrily. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Yosuke thought of Nanako, and of her first persona, Icarus. They needed Nanako now, so that Junpei and Nanako could take turns burning the shadow until it finally went down.

He'd barely even had time to finish forming the thought in his mind before he heard Nanako running out of the Velvet Room at a breakneck pace. "Big Bro!" she called. "Big Bro, I'm coming!"

"Nanako!" shouted Dojima, close on her heels. "Stop this! Nanako, get back here!"

What the hell, thought Yosuke. Of all the stupid times for a family feud…

**Twenty - December 26**

**Author's Note: **Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for!

Now, I do have to let you know that in order to see the rest of this scene, you're going to have to read the next chapter in **Messiah**. I believe the chapter that you are looking for is **Twenty Seven – December 26.** I have not uploaded it yet, but keep an eye out for it if you're interested in seeing the rest of this encounter.

If not, **Piecekeeping** will pick back up again directly after that encounter ends, so you can keep reading without any dramatic breaks.

**Twenty – December 26**

Yosuke and the others watched in a combination of relief and alarm as Nanako rushed forward and planted herself right in front of the shadow. Dojima tried to follow her, but Yu grabbed him by the arm and attempted to hold him back.

"What are you doing?" he asked, dropping the formality he usually used with his uncle in the heat of a panicked moment. "Are you out of your mind? Stay away from that thing!"

"Nanako!" shouted Dojima, struggling and ultimately freeing himself from Yu's grip. Yu looked to Chie for help, and Chie, who really was, Yosuke reflected, a hell of a lot stronger than she looked held on to Dojima's shoulder and forced him to back himself up against the wall.

"Let go of me," shouted Dojima. "That's my daughter out there, my only daughter!"

"Hey, Nanako-chan," said Junpei, "you've got Icarus still, right? Can you call it? I want you to try something with me."

Nanako obediently summoned Icarus, and she and Junpei began, as intended, their double-barreled fire assault on the shadow. Teddie and Ken stood by, prepared to cast any necessary healing spells at a moment's notice. Yosuke and the rest of the team almost instinctively stepped back.

"What the hell is going on here?" asked Yosuke, still able to hear Dojima's angry bellows from where Chie was doing her best to quiet and restrain him. "Why'd Dojima-san go all crazy all of a sudden?"

Yukari frowned, shaking her head. "I don't know," she admitted. "We were all at Nanako-chan's house when you called us. Nanako rushed out with the rest of us to come and help, but Dojima-san got really angry and told her that she needed to stay behind, even if it meant that Yu got hurt in the meantime."

Yosuke felt something twist angrily inside of him. "He said what?"

"Then Nanako-chan," continued Yukari, her eyes still on the shadow battle taking place not two feet away from them, "started screaming that Dojima-san didn't love Yu anymore, and that she hated him. She ran out, and we went with her, and…I guess Dojima-san came chasing after."

Yosuke, too, was having trouble focusing on the story while avoiding blows from the shadow and keeping as much of an eye on Nanako as he could at the same time. Still, he felt himself getting angrier and angrier the more he thought about what Yukari was saying. No wonder Nanako had freaked out. Dojima-san didn't care if Yu got hurt? That didn't make sense. Maybe he was a bit of a pain in the ass when it came to rules and regulations, and maybe he'd never really understood what Yosuke and his friends were actually trying to do during the Inaba murder case, but Dojima was supposed to be an ally. He was supposed to be on their side. Was he really as soulless as all of that? Did he not get what was at stake, here?

"You guys still don't' get it," shouted Junpei, in between bursts of flame. "Guy watched his nephew die. Now he finds out that there's some crazy other world that could kill his only daughter, too. There's no way he's being rational right now. Can you blame him? He's not a persona user, like us. He's not used to all this shit…not that there's ever any real way to get used to it. Like watching someone die or risk their life ever gets any easier…cause it doesn't. Maybe he's the only one of us crazy hero-complex sacks of shit that has the right idea. You know?"

"How the hell can you say that?"

"How can you not?" retorted Junpei." You're as stupid as you look if you're sure that we're all gonna make it out of this alive. Being a leader's about facing the facts, man. Sometimes it's about making sacrifices. Dojima-san gets that, even if you don't. She's his daughter. He doesn't want to lose her."

"So he's okay with losing the guy he's raising as his son?" asked Yosuke through gritted teeth.

Junpei was quiet for a moment. "There are people in the world you'd lose everything for," he said eventually. "It sucks, but that's the way it is. Maybe you'll grow up someday and get what that means."

Yosuke clenched his fists. "No way," he muttered. "I'm never gonna be that guy."

Suddenly, Junpei looked him straight in the eyes, and Yosuke had to stop himself from taking a wary step back at the cold, empty look on Junpei's usual casual face.

"You know what?" he spat. "I think you're right. You never will."

Junpei's gaze broke away from Yosuke's, and Yosuke found himself standing there with a very strange and unwelcome feeling in his gut, as though he'd just seen deeply into the middle of something awful and ancient that he neither understood or wanted to understand.

From behind Yosuke, Chie was crying for help. "Hey, guys!" she shouted. "Please, I really need some backup here!"

Yosuke turned around and saw that she was really struggling with Dojima. For the briefest moment, he thought about calling out to her to just use her persona to knock Dojima out for a while, or for just long enough o let them take care of the problem. Then he hated himself for even thinking those thoughts, and found himself looking involuntarily back at Junpei. Junpei just raised an eyebrow at him, and went back to fighting.

"I'm coming, Chie-senpai!' called Naoto, heading back in the direction where Chie and Yu were still standing.

Yu, Yosuke realized, was looking back and forth between Nanako and Dojima, and there was something closed and angry about the look on his face that sent a little shiver down Yosuke's spine and across his shoulders.

"Hey," he began.

Yu's lips moved, and although he was too far away for Yosuke to hear, Yosuke recognized the syllables of the word "persona."

"Wait, Wha-?" demanded Yosuke.

Then, Yu stood up.

For Yosuke, time seemed to stop. He was aware, of course, that Nanako, Junpei, and the two healers were still actively in the process of taking down the giant shadow, but for a few moments, that was nothing but background noise. Yu was standing up, pushing his chair away from him, and then something large and blue-tinted shot out of him, shaking it's fists in the air and whirling around on the giant shadow with determination and calm, controlled vengeance in its eyes.

"My god," whispered Naoto. "Zao-Gongen, the persona representing strength. Manifestation of patience, control, compassion, and stability."

"Why do you know all this stuff?" asked Yosuke.

Naoto shrugged "When I became a persona user, I did the appropriate research. Didn't you?"

The blue persona, apparently Zao-Gongen, stepped forward.

"Agidyne," mouthed Yu.

Zao-Gongen attacked. The world sped up again for Yosuke, and as the battle continued to rage full-force, Yu ran forward to join the others, his eyes blazing with the same fire that was coming in impressively focused bursts from the figure of his newly awakened persona.

After that, the battle didn't take much longer. Between Yu, Nanako, and Junpei, the shadow did eventually, erupt into a black and red gust of shadow essence, leaving SEES and the investigation team to stand around and stare at the newly healed Yu Narukami, who was now breathing heavily in the middle of the room as his persona disappeared, returning to the inside of his soul.

No one moved for a long moment, as though worried that breaking the spell would suddenly ruin the magic that had apparently happened in the midst of the fight.

Then, Nanako broke the silence.

"Big Bro!" she squealed, throwing herself at him and wrapping her arms around him in the biggest and most enthusiastically warm hug that Yosuke had ever seen. "You're okay! You're okay again! Yaaaay!"

Yu bent down to kiss Nanako on the top of the head, and when he straightened back up again, Yosuke stepped forward and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, looking directly into his face.

"You…wait, are you…?" askd Yosuke.

Yu nodded. "Yeah," he said. "It's okay."

He grabbed Yosuke's arm in a gesture of thanks that had Yosuke grinning all over his face in a matter of moments. Then, all hell broke loose.

The rest of the team all closed in on Yu at the same time, chattering, babbling, asking every question they could think of and hugging him over and over again. It took Yu several minutes to extract himself from the throng of well-wishers. When he finally did, he turned back to Yosuke.

"You did this," he said to Yosuke. "I couldn't have done it without you."

"Nah," muttered Yosuke, feeling strangely embarrassed all of a sudden." Actually, the whole thing was Naoto's idea…although it looked like it wasn't gonna work for a few scary minutes there, gotta admit."

Naoto cleared her throat, looking a bit sheepish as well, and Yu grinned at them both.

"Big Bro," murmured Nanako. "Um, what about…?"

Yu nodded at her, then turned to look up at Dojima, who was on his own now that Chie had rushed down to join the rest of her friends. Yu took a few strides away from the group, closing the distance between him and his uncle.

"Y-you," began Dojima, apparently at something of a loss for words.

Yu gave him a long, searching look. Yosuke couldn't tell what Yu was feeling, but imagined that there must be a whole slew of complex emotions behind that calm façade. He was staring down a man that he loved, whom he respected and trusted almost like a father, and whom he'd just watch try to betray him for the sake of someone else.

"I made you a promise, didn't I?" asked Yu.

"Yeah," mumbled Dojima.

"Well," replied Yu. "I meant what I said. I will never let anything happen to our family. You can be sure of that. I will keep my promise."

With Dojima still standing there, mouth slightly open in shock, Yu left him and went back to his friends.

"You okay?" asked Yosuke. "Do you, uh…want to sit down for a while? I mean, you haven't used your legs in, like…oh, and your persona just re-awakened, so you must be pretty beat."

"Let us go back for today," agreed Mitsuru, nodding. "There has been more than enough excitement, and I believe it would be a good idea to inform Arisato of recent developments. Perhaps this new power awakened in Narukami will help guide her towards some revelation of her own."

"Oh, right!" agreed Junpei. "Yeah, we have to tell her! Maybe there's a clue here. I mean, let's think about it, right? Yu got his powers back because he, uh, kept a promise, I think. So…all Mina-tan's got to do is make a promise, and keep it? Is it really that easy? That doesn't sound right…"

"Let's show Igor," suggested Yu." Maybe he'll have some idea of what this could mean for Minako."

They chatted animatedly as they headed back towards the Velvet Room. Yosuke's head was still spinning from everything that had just happened, but with every step he started to feel a little bit lighter and more secure. The worst was over now. They'd won their victory, they'd saved his partner…and now all that was left was to finish things up and use what they knew to help put Minako back together. After that, everything would go back to the way it had been, and he could go back to being a normal guy, which was something he wasn't even sure how to be anymore. What did 'normal' really mean, anyway?

He was lost in the middle of that puzzling revelation when Yu pushed open the door to the Velvet Room.

"Aw, hell," muttered Junpei. Startled by Junpei's exclamation, Yosuke looked up, and found himself staring into the eyes of Minako and Adachi, who appeared to be in the process of untangling themselves from one another.

Yosuke's mouth fell open, and something in his heart stopped dead.

**Twenty One - Collision**

**Twenty One – Collision**

After the confrontation with Minako and Adachi in the Velvet Room, Yosuke felt as though he was suffocating on his own anger. His insides felt tight and constricted, and he burst back out of the TV and into the Junes electronics department breathing hard and trying to get the spinning, sick sensation out of his head. One by one, the others tumbled or jumped out after him, and one by one, murmuring to themselves, they wandered out of the store and into the open air. Yosuke couldn't bring himself to follow them. He sat on the floor instead, trying not to think too hard, and waiting for his partner to show up.

For some reason, though, Yu never came.

As Yosuke waited, the thought crossed his mind that something might have happened to Yu, or that he might have gotten stuck behind in the Velvet Room, dealing with some of the aftermath of the argument that had just taken place. His fists clenched at his sides as he wondered just how angry Adachi might have been, and worried that maybe Igor's supposed rules of the Velvet Room wouldn't be strong enough to hold back a crazy killing machine like the thing that Adachi had shown himself more than once to be.

Just as Yosuke was getting to his feet and preparing to head back into the TV to look for his friend, Naoto popped out of the screen and landed, gracefully as always, alongside him.

"Yosuke-kun," she murmured, sounding worried. Naoto never sounded worried. She was epitome of calm, collected control. The worry in her voice made Yosuke stop for a moment and look, really look at her in a way that he hadn't carefully or seriously looked at anyone since he'd seen Minako in Adachi's arms.

"Hey," he mumbled, clearing his throat and trying to get his voice to sound something like the way it usually did. "You okay?"

"I…I'm fine," Naoto assured him, but she didn't look fine. She looked upset, stressed out, and as though there was something on her mind that was trying to force its way through that cool, hard-boiled exterior that everybody was so used to from her.

"You're pissed off about it, too, huh?" asked Yosuke, gritting his teeth. "I guess that whole scene was pretty crazy. Minako and…and Adachi. I'd never…honestly, I guess I should have figured it out before, but I never thought, not for a second that she'd do something like that. I thought we could trust her, I really thought she was one of us, I…"

"Yosuke," interrupted Naoto. "It's…it's not about Minako, or Adachi-san. It…has nothing to do with them."

"Huh?" Yosuke blinked. "Then what's up?"

Unexpectedly, Naoto stared directly at her feet for a long moment before speaking up again. "I am distressed," she said eventually, "to see how much this episode has upset you. It is…difficult for me to watch you in so much pain. Forgive me…it is something of a weakness, but…"

Yosuke shook his head, and gave her a friendly clap on the shoulder. "Oh, really? Nah, that's just you being a good friend. I guess it's always that way when something bad happens to one of your buddies, right? Hey, thanks, though. Means a lot to hear that coming from you. It'll be okay…maybe. Yu's healed now, the whole mess with the shadows is over…stuff's gonna go back to normal, you'll see. We can just forget that any of this crazy crap with Minako and her weird friends ever happened, and…and just live, I guess. So relax."

He said it, but even as he spoke, part of him didn't believe it. The image of Minako and Adachi together kept running through his head, accompanied by the background noise of Adachi's maniacal laughter, and what he still imagined were Saki's terrified screams of protest. Closing his eyes, he tried to shut the pictures out, but even with his eyes closed the images danced along the backs of his lids and through the recesses of his frantic mind, deprived of sleep and rest after so many days and nights of wondering and worrying about Yu, Nanako, and the others.

This, he thought, is what it really means to be a leader. It means never sleeping at night, never being able to relax or have a moment's peace of mind. Hell, it was amazing that Yu had managed to hold up under the pressure for so long. Obviously his partner was a better man than he would ever be…not that it came as such a big shock, anyway.

"At least I'm done being the leader, now," he muttered. "Good riddance…not like I was much of one to begin with."

"I think that you were an excellent leader, Yosuke-kun," murmured Naoto. "You care about people so very much…you devote yourself to them. It is…an admirable quality. I see it so rarely, that kind of genuine loyalty."

There was something about Naoto's voice that still just didn't sound right, but Yosuke couldn't think about it right now. He couldn't think about anything right now, except how badly he wanted not to have to think about things.

"You go on ahead," he told her. "I've gotta wait for Yu. I guess…I guess maybe he's talking to Minako, or something. I don't know. If he's not out in five minutes, I'm gonna-!"

"I'd like to stay with you, if I may," said Naoto.

Yosuke stopped and blinked at her for a moment.

"I-in case, "stammered Naoto suddenly, "we discover that Yu does, in fact, require our help. Two heads and two personas, of course, are better than one…am I correct?"

"Uh…yeah, sure," agreed Yosuke. "Right."

**Meanwhile, on the way to the Dojima residence…**

Dad was pulling Nanako along so hard by the arm that it was beginning to hurt. Nanako winced, and tried to squeeze out of her father's grip, but he didn't relax his hold even a little bit.

"Daddy," whispered Nanako miserably." Please…um…you're hurting me."

Dad came to a sudden stop, jerking Nanako back along with him. He released her, and she massaged her wrist until some of the life started to come back into it.

"You knew, didn't you?" he asked, not looking at her.

Nanako winced. "What?"

"Nanako, look at me." Reaching down, he placed a finger under her chin and turned her face to meet his. "About Adachi. You knew the whole time that he was still alive, didn't you?"

Miserably, Nanako nodded "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I'm so sorry, Dad…it's all my fault." Tears began to spill out through the corners of her eyes as she gave up on being a big girl and on being far too old and mature to cry. Junpei had cried. Minako had almost cried. Nanako was going to cry too, and it didn't matter whether or not that was really okay. She was completely dejected, and horrified after what she'd just seen happen between her friends, and what made it worse was that she was sure that she was responsible for the whole thing. If only she hadn't kept so many secrets, if only she hadn't decided that she just had to help, if only…

"Nanako," said Dad. His fingers moved from her chin to her cheek, and his voice became gentler as he began to brush the tears away. "It's not your fault. None of this is your fault. How could it be? It's got nothing at all to do with you…it never did. It's my fault for not noticing sooner what all of this was turning into, and for not getting you out before it was too late. You understand? You didn't do this."

"But I did!" bawled Nanako. "I did…I told Minako that Adachi-san really liked her, and I'm the one who helped her get in and out of the Velvet Room, and I'm the one who kept it a secret from Yosuke and the others…I broke everything! But I didn't mean to…I didn't mean to make anyone so angry. I just thought that it would make Adachi-san happy, and he always looked so unhappy, so…"

The tears overcame her, and she gave up and dissolved into floods of sadness. Dad gathered her into his arms and held her there for a few minutes while she snuffled and sniffled into his shirt.

"You were in over your head," muttered Dad, hugging her to him. "You shouldn't have had to deal with any of this. You're just a kid. It never should have been your responsibility in the first place. Nanako, why didn't you come to me when things started getting out of hand? Why didn't you tell me sooner what was going on with the shadows and the Velvet Room? I'm your father, I'm here to protect you, that's my job….why couldn't you have relied on me?"

Wiping the back of her hand across her face, Nanako looked up into her father's eyes, and gave him an accusing look.

"You wouldn't have believed me," she told him frankly.

That seemed to take Dad aback for a moment. "Yeah," he muttered eventually. "Yeah, that's…that's probably true."

They started walking again, and continued on for several minutes before Nanako finally found the courage to ask another question.

"Do you…do you still love me?" she hazarded.

Again, Dad stopped, and again, Nanako had to pull herself up short to stick with him.

"Of course I love you," insisted Dad. "I will always love you. I love you more than anything else in the entire world, more than…more than you can possibly imagine, Nanako. That's the reason I get so angry, it's because I'm scared of losing you. Don't you understand that?"

"But," sniffled Nanako, "when you found out about what Big Bro was doing in the Velvet Room, and how he got hurt, you didn't love him anymore."

Dad winced. "I love your cousin too," he explained quietly. "I love him like he was really your brother. But I can't protect him, you see? I can't force him to stay safe, I can't tell him what to do. He doesn't have to listen to me anymore. His decisions are out of my control, now that he's grown up. I…I don't want to watch him get hurt. It makes me angry, thinking that there's nothing I can do…and then I think of you. I think of my little girl, and how the only thing that I can do that's worth doing in this worth is to keep her safe, even if that means I have to…I have to watch someone else slip away from me. I don't want you to understand that, so…don't try. I don't want you to ever know what feels like."

Nanako nodded. She didn't understand, but he had told her that it was okay not to understand, and besides, he'd said he loved her and Big Bro, so that was more than enough. That was all she had wanted to be sure of, anyway, and the more she thought about it, the warmer and safer she began to feel.

"I don't hate you, Daddy," she told him urgently. "I'm so sorry…"

"Shhh," insisted Dad comfortingly. "Hey, it's okay. It's over now. I forgive you."

The house swung into view in front of them, and Dad reached into his pocket to pull out his keys. Nanako watched him open the door, and they both stepped inside to the newly cleaned kitchen that Mitsuru, Ken, and the others had all been cleaning only hours before.

"Do you think the others will stay, now that Big Bro and Minako are all better?" asked Nanako, as she helped her father put away a few dishes that Yukari had left out after drying them.

Dad shook his head. "Nah," he muttered. "Probably not. Honestly, I hope they all leave…we've had enough excitement and insanity around here. Better if we go back to the way things used to be, just pretend none of this crap ever happened."

That didn't sit quite right with Nanako. She had really enjoyed getting to know the SEES members, and was sad to think of all of them going home again, especially Ken, who she'd hoped would teach her some of how he'd become such a great persona user.

"And…what about Minako?" she asked, aware that she was probably pushing her luck.

Dad had to think about that one for a long moment before he came up with an answer.

"She lied to me," he said finally, and there was an edge to his voice that grated against Nanako's fragile nerves. "That…I don't know. Maybe it would be better if she went with the rest of them."

That, Nanak could not leave alone. "But I lied to you," she protested, "and you said that you still love me."

"'It's different," growled Dad. "You're family."

"But why?" Nanako came around until she was right in front of Dad, standing in his path and preventing him from reaching the counter that he'd just walked over to, presumably to rummage around for some snacks. "Why is it different?"

Dad sighed. Patting Nanako on the head, he adroitly moved her out of his way, and continued reaching for the shelf he wanted.

"There's not a reason, okay?" he explained, or rather didn't explain. "That's just the way it is. Some things just are. Not everything's got a reason."

Nanako frowned as she sank back into a kitchen chair and watched her father work on something like lunch. That couldn't be right, she told herself. This couldn't really be the end. After all, they'd saved the day, hadn't they? Big Bro was better, and Minako was better, and…and the story was supposed to have a happy ending, now that everyone was going to be okay.

She would ask Big Bro about it, she decided, when he got back from the Velvet Room. Better yet, she thought, she would go back to the Velvet Room tomorrow, and talk to Igor. There were still things she wanted to know, and answers she had to find. Because, she told herself, Dad had been wrong about that last thing. Everything did have to have a reason. Otherwise, the world would make no sense, and that was not something that Nanako would ever be willing to accept. It was too frightening to even think about.

**Author's Closing Note: **Oh dear god, what have I done? So many loose ends, so many damaged relationships, so much that needs to be fixed…

Yes, unfortunately this is the end of **Piecekeeping**, as this is the end, more or less, of the Velvet Room shadow epic. This is, however, obviously not the end of the overall story arc, since there are now a million broken pieces and a million broken bonds that have to be put back together. I promise you, I have plotted out and thus intend to fix every single broken thing that I have just destroyed, but I have not decided exactly what story format I am going to use to do that. I feel that the problems I've created here are much more character-driven and intimate, and thus will probably require several short, more focused stories, rather than one giant epic.

If you're interested in seeing how I put the pieces back together, please keep an eye on my page, and check out the stories that I'll begin posting soon. Again, I'm not sure entirely how I'm going to tackle this, but I will tackle it, and relatively quickly, so I hope that you've at least sort of enjoyed the ride so far, and that you're ready, finally, for the next installment in what has become a beloved project of mine.

Thank you very much for reading, it means more to me than I can reasonably express.

And now, if you'll excuse me, after writing the conclusions to both stories in a single Sunday sitting, I am going to pass out. Cheers!


	9. The Little Pieces

**Ave Maria**

**Author's Note: **Another forty minute-freewrite. This takes place during the timeline of **Piecekeeping**, shortly after the end of the most recent chapter.

Wait, what? That's right! Finally , I'm beginning to prepare to update **Piecekeeping** again! Huzzah! I'm excited. I hope you are too.

Anyway, I apologize for somewhat strange tone of this piece. I was compiling mournful religious music for the Hamlet soundtrack while I wrote it, and so this is what came of that.

**Ave Maria**

Heaven was a peaceful place, a place where everything was still and quiet enough to listen to the echoes inside Nanako's soul of the shuddering and desperate feelings that she never let out into the light of day. It was a beautiful place, the sort of place you could feel safe and comfortable in, and although Nanako had avoided it ever since she'd first awakened to her persona more than a year ago, she now found herself walking through the halls of paradise and almost enjoying the Heaven that she'd created.

There was only one problem with this place, she thought, biting her lip as she padded down a corridor and turned a corner onto another majestically lit and flower-lined path. It felt so lonely here, so empty in the end, and Nanako knew that her mother would never have loved a place that was this lonely. Her mother had loved laughter and long walks with Nanako and her father when they'd all been together as a family. Loneliness was no place for her to rest.

"Mommy…" whispered Nanako, gazing up at the towering arches and domes that were somehow a part of the silent castle that stretched and loomed through the realms of Heaven.

Suddenly, a hand touched Nanako's shoulder. She wasn't frightened, or worried, or even surprised. There was no more fear in this place, only quiet and memories.

Turning around, Nanako found Ken Amada standing behind her, watching her with a curious sort of frown on his face.

"Nanako-chan?" he asked. "Why did you go off alone like that? Everyone's worried about you. I said I'd go look."

"I'm sorry," murmured Nanako. "I…I just wanted to see Mom."

Ken looked up into the sky, then around at the flowers and the strangely still scenery. "Oh," he murmured. "I see."

"I wanted to tell her that I'm sorry," Nanako went on, surprised by how relieved she was at finally having another person to talk to in this place. "I hurt Dad…I made him scared. When the shadow came, he…he was scared of me. I just wanted to keep him safe, but…" She sighed. "I don't know why he was so scared. I wanted to tell Mom that I didn't mean to. She's probably watching, right? So she would know what happened. I don't want her to be angry with me…or with Dad."

They walked on together for a few paces, neither of them saying anything, until Nanako stopped, turned around, and looked back at Ken.

"But she's not here," insisted Nanako, feeling frustrated tears starting to well up in her eyes.

"Because this place isn't real," Ken explained slowly. "You imagined this, Nanako. This isn't a real Heaven, it's just the way it looks in your mind."

"But if I imagine Mom," said Nanako, almost begging, "then shouldn't she be here too? I can make this place appear, so…I should be able to make Mom come, right?"

Ken just shook his head. "People aren't like that," he told her. "People are too much for us to imagine. There are, uh…lots of different sides to people. They feel so many different things. It's more than we can make up in our heads, so…we can't bring them here."

"Oh," murmured Nanako, not quite understanding.

"Um…Yu or Minako would probably explain it better," muttered Ken. "I'm not very-!"

"Ken-san?" interrupted Nanako. "What do you think Heaven looks like?"

The question seemed to take Ken aback for a moment. "I, uh…" he stammered, blinking at her in the brilliance of Heaven's light. "I think it's a happy place. There are no bad guys there, and everyone is always smiling, and…" He trailed of, looking embarrassed. "This sounds pretty childish, I-!"

Nanako was nodding as she listened. "And there are no nightmares, right?" she added, gazing into his face hopefully. "And no sadness?"

Ken didn't seem to have anything to say. He just nodded back at her, once. That was enough for Nanako.

"So," she continued, "then this can't be Heaven, because…there are shadows here, and in Heaven there wouldn't be any shadows. In Heaven there are only good things." Pausing, she thought for a moment, then asked, "Do you think there's a real Heaven somewhere?"

"I hope so," murmured Ken.

"And do you think," pushed Nanako, "that my Mom, and your Mom, and your Dad are all there together?"

For once, that seemed to break through to Ken, and a little, hesitant smile drifted across his face. "Of course," he told her.

Nanako smiled back. "And they're probably friends, right?"

Ken reached out and ruffled her hair. Nanako could see that there were tears in his eyes, too, although he dashed them away quickly with the back of his hand, and she knew enough about boys to pretend that she hadn't noticed.

"If your Mom is anything like you," he said quietly, "I think it'd be hard not to like her. So…yeah, they're friends."

"Then I think they're probably really happy," announced Nanako, squeezing Ken's hand as they started off again together through the streets. "Because you can't be happy if you're lonely, but if there are friends in Heaven, then I think it'll all be okay."

**Hero**

**Author's Note: **Apologies for the sporadic and nonsensical update schedule: I JUST finished opening weekend of my show, and am finishing up a series of grueling sixty-page exams. By Thursday, all that will be over, and I will resume finishing things in a timely fashion. Please expect an alarming explosion of updates this coming weekend, as I bring multiple stories to a close, and post several chapters that have been sitting on my computer for weeks, unfinished and un-edited. Phew.

I intended to finish "Horatio" tonight, and will instead likely finish it after work tomorrow. I started writing the ending to that, but it ended up turning into this, instead, and I'm reasonably certain that I know why. Yesterday, my best friend announced to me that she will be deploying in October to a warzone that we read about frequently in the papers. I may have been unconsciously thinking about that when I created this.

This is a companion piece to **Messiah**, and falls within the timeline of that story.

Thank you for your patience, and I'm looking forward to getting back to regular and sensible updates soon.

**Hero**

A few days prior to leaving on her vacation to Iwatodai, Minako stopped into Daidara's store on her way to work.

"Welcome to Daidara's Gallery," began Junpei as Minako pushed open the door. "Home of the finest collection of hand=crafted…oh, hey, Mina-tan! Cool, I didn't think you'd come by today. What's up? You playing hookie from work?"

"No way," insisted Minako. "I just got an early start today."

Junpei grinned. "Yeah, I know, I know," he assured her. "You're too good for your own good, or something clever like that. Not that taking a day off now and then would be such a bad thing…"

Minako was about to remind him that she had, in fact, requested several days off just to take a trip with him during the upcoming week. She stopped when she heard the door open behind her, and a set of familiarly heavy and careless footsteps made their way past her towards the counter.

"Oh, hey Minako," said Yosuke. "Haven't seen you around in a few days."

"I've been busy with work," murmured Minako apologetically. "I know I've been hard to get a hold of, but I promise I'll come by Junes soon. I'm sorry."

"Nah, it's fine," Yosuke insisted. "I bet Dojima-san can be a real slave driver…hey, better you than me, that's all I'm saying."

"No shit," added Junpei. "You know, Dojima-san had her stuck at the desk until after midnight three nights in a row last week! I guess I should just get used to night driving, huh?"

Yosuke completely ignored him. "So," he asked, "I guess Daidara-san's not in yet? My Dad wanted me to ask him about an order we placed at Junes."

"Uh, nah, he's not here," began Junpei. "But, if you want, I'm sure that I can-!"

"Then I'll come back tomorrow to talk to him," interrupted Yosuke, cutting Junpei off mid-sentence. "Anyway, I'll see you around, Minako. Don't work too hard, okay?"

He turned around and walked quickly out of the store, leaving Minako standing there with her mouth hanging slightly open in surprise.

"Man," muttered Junpei with a sigh. "That just never gets any less awkward…"

Minako frowned. "So," she said, "then you two haven't gotten over what happened in the Velvet Room."

"Whatever," grunted Junpei. "I'm over it, and all. He's the one with the problem." Minako could hear the frustration in his voice, even if he was trying to play the whole thing off as nothing to worry about. "Still, I guess I don't really blame him. I mean, I don't know, I did kinda threaten to shoot his dead best friend's little sister, and…that's kind of a big deal. I'd be pissed. So…"

Minako bit her lip. When Junpei put it like that, it was relatively easy to imagine why Yosuke might be struggling to get over his grudge.

"Have you tried actually apologizing to him?" she asked, knowing the answer before she even finished formulating the question.

"What are you, my mom?" asked Junpei. "Or, uh, maybe not my mom…actually, right then, you sounded more like Mitsuru-senpai after hearing that I'd come back to the dorm with a bad exam grade, or something. No, I haven't 'apologized.' Not like it matters. You think he'd care one way or another if I felt bad about it, or if I was really sorry?"

Minako was ready to answer him. She started to say something about the benevolent effect of good intentions, or the fact that maybe Yosuke would be surprised to hear that Junpei really could understand how he felt. There were a hundred things that she could have said, and wanted to say, but Junpei's next words startled her into silence.

"And I'm not sorry," he muttered. "I got nothing to say to him. Yeah, it sucks that it happened like that, but…I got no regrets, okay? Okay, maybe that's not true, maybe it was hard on little Nanako-chan, but…anyway, I wouldn't take it back. If he's gonna stay mad, fine, if that's how it's gotta be. I can deal with it."

Minako wasn't sure quite what to make of that. All along, she realized, she'd continued to blithely assume Junpei's kidnapping of Nanako during their second attempt at sealing Nyx had been committed in a moment of terrified weakness, and that, having now come back to his senses, Junpei would be remorseful and repentant about the anguish that he had put the others through. It had never occurred to her that he wouldn't have taken it back, if he'd had the chance. Then again, she admitted to herself, she'd never taken the time to ask him.

"I'm surprised at you," she managed, after a moment, not bothering to try and clip the accusing, remonstrative edge off of her tone. "The Junpei I used to know was a good guy, a guy with morals, and…and with a conscience. He'd never have been able to hurt a little girl, or at least, not without hating himself for it afterwards. Where's that Junpei? I liked him. What happened to him?"

"A lot of things," mumbled Junpei.

Something about the way he said it startled Minako, and there were deeper and darker tones in his voice that belonged to the man Junpei had become, and not to the boy that he'd been back in high school.

He laughed, bitterly and self consciously. "I guess Junpei Iori, righteous savior of the universe is gone for good," he told her. "Maybe that's a bad thing, but…I guess I don't care. After we defeated Nyx, I started thinking about things, and figuring some stuff out."

"What stuff?" was all Minako managed to ask.

"Like…what my priorities are," continued Junpei. "I mean, we were these big deal heroes, and we were the only ones destined to save the world, right? It was a huge rush, even near the end when everything started to look and feel like crazy hell."

Minako remembered the way Junpei had rejected, at first, everything that Ryoji had tried to tell them about Nyx, and the end. She remembered how much it had hurt them both when he'd shouted at her that day, accusing her of being the reason that everything had started to unravel because she'd been the one carrying all of that inside her for so long. What Junpei now referred to as playing "savior of the universe" had taken as much a toll on him as it had on everyone else, and even then his gung-ho, determined confidence in them had pushed her forward to do the right thing and to believe that she and everyone else in SEES could make the difference that would change and save their lives and the lives of the people they loved. Every time she'd had to make another horrible, terrifying decision that put them all in danger, Junpei had been right there with her, egging her on. She'd known she could take on the world, with him at her side, so…what was this, all of a sudden? What was he talking about, when he brought up "new priorities?"

"I don't understand," she said blankly. "What are you-?"

"You wouldn't," muttered Junpei. "It'd be hard, because…well, you weren't there. We did it, in the end. We totally saved the whole goddamn world. Me, Junpei Iori, I saved the world. Hell, it was awesome, it was amazing, and then…"

He was quiet for a moment, and Minako found tears unexpectedly welling up in her eyes, although at the moment she wasn't sure why.

"When the dust cleared," murmured Junpei, "and it was all over, and we were the fucking heroes of the hour…you were gone. I guess then, it didn't matter anymore. What the hell good is the world if you lose the things you wanted to live for, right? To everybody else, you were the hero, the girl who sacrificed herself for everybody else to keep on living. For me, though…you were just my best friend, and here I was in this big stupid world that I'd thought I cared so much about protecting, wondering what the hell I was supposed to care about now. It's funny, I guess, but the world doesn't mean much without you in it. Who the hell cares if I'm the good guy? I don't want to do the right thing. I don't want to be a hero. I don't want to be alone."

"Junpei," whispered Minako, unsure what else there was to say. Somehow, words weren't going to be enough, no matter how carefully she chose them.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "So I'm not the guy you thought I was. I'm not the guy I thought I was, either, but…like I said, I can live with that."

Minako reached out for him, and her fingers bumped against the counter as she groped around, trying to find him through the sightless haze. She wanted to explain to him that it hadn't been a choice, that the world would have ended without her sacrifice, and that the end of the world would have meant the end of them both. She couldn't imagine what it would have been like to let him suffer, to let her friends suffer, to give up and watch the world crumble around her just so that she wouldn't have had to face the end for her alone. She was proud of what she'd done, and she was glad that she'd been able to give something to the people who'd made her world worth living in, even if that meant that she'd lost the chance at a future. There hadn't been another way.

"I'm sorry," she told him.

"Nah," murmured Junpei. "You're not. It's okay, forget it."

**When I'm Sixty Four**

Author's Note:Another angsty one-shot, this time in honor it being March 5! Thanks to DimensionSlip for the inspiration. You should, by the way, go check outDimensionSlip'S stories immediately, by the way. They are wonderfully written and brilliant. Seriously, why are you still reading this? You should be reading those stories instead.

If we're looking at the timeline of my persona series, this story falls sometime after the end of Messiah and Piecekeeipng, so I guess you're getting a rare glimpse into the future… *cue creepy sci-fi music!*There are, of course, no major spoilers, except that now you know that Junpei and Minako don't' die at the end of that story, cause they're in this one. Whoops!

I hope you enjoy it!

When I'm Sixty Four

_Junpei was panting and wheezing by the time he finally got all the way up to the roof of Gekkoukan High School. He could already see the other members of SEES, all standing with their backs to him, still as statues, focused on something on the ground, something that Junpei couldn't see._

_No._

_Mitsuru-senpai was there, with Fuuka and Yukari. Was Yukari crying? And what was with that horrible, anguished look on Aigis' face? Ken and Akihiko were there too, and…wait, was that Shinjiro-san, kneeling on the ground, holding something in his arms? What was he…?_

_No._

_The realization hit Junpei like a bag of horrible half-ton bricks. He started running faster, tripping over his feet in his haste to get to the top of the stairs, even though he already knew that it didn't matter, that he'd lost his chance, that there was nothing left for him to do, and that it was all over._

_It was too late._

_She was already gone._

_Without ever knowing it, without being able to remember it, he'd managed to fail her._

Something between a moan and a shout ripped out of Junpei's throat as he fell out of bed with a thud. It was pitch black outside, and it took him a few bleary moments of rubbing his eyes and getting his bearings before he realized that it was still the middle of the night, and that he'd been having that dream again.

The dream never made sense, of course. Every time he woke up from it, he realized that it had been a little different than it had been the time before. Nothing had really happened the way he always pictured it in the dream. Who had it been, holding Minako in his arms? Not Shinjiro, right? Honestly, Junpei had woken up from that dream so many times now that he couldn't remember the way the events had really played out anymore. The only thing he did know for sure, the thing that he'd never be able to forget was that, as he'd been climbing those stairs, he hadn't realized what was going on. There had been no moment of accepting that it was too late, no sense of awful foreboding. He'd just gotten there, halfway through some stupid sentence about how he was getting old and his memory was going bad, and then he'd found her lying on the ground. She'd been awake, still, when he found her. She'd been awake just long enough for him to watch the life flicker out in her eyes like the little spark of flame right before the match burns out forever. It was nothing that he would ever be able to forget.

Pulling on a pair of pants and clearing his throat to get rid of the emotional gunk that was clogging him up, Junpei walked over to the wall calendar and took a look. Sure enough, it was March 5. No wonder he was having nightmares.

Outside the window, he could see that it was, unexpectedly, snowing just a little, or maybe it was really only sleet. Either way, it would be cold out, and dangerous walking home. Maybe, he thought, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to call and see if Minako was still at work. After all, she had been working late nights for Dojima-san over the past week or two.

Picking up his phone, he dialed her number. For some reason, when she picked up, he started breathing again. He hadn't even realized that he was holding his breath.

Twenty minutes later, at the Inaba police station…

"Mina-tan?" Junpei called, as he walked in through the front door. There didn't seem to be anyone else working this late, and Junpei made a mental note to tell Minako to start locking the front door, or something, when she was working here all alone at night.

He could see her sitting at Dojima-san's desk, writing something down on a piece of paper. As Junpei watched, she frowned, got frustrated, then crumpled the sheet up and tossed it towards the nearby trashcan, missing by at a foot. Junpei walked over, picked up the paper, and stuck it into the trash.

""Hey," he said. "You ready to go?"

Minako sighed. "I guess so," she muttered.

"What are you even doing here this late?" Junpei asked. He wasn't entirely sure what Minako actually did at the station, other than whatever Dojima-san expected her to do, whenever he needed it. There didn't seem to be any reason for her to be here with no one else around, especially when the case Dojima-san had been working on had already cracked wide open.

"Oh," replied Minako tiredly, "I'm working on my handwriting. Trying to figure out if I can train myself to write legible notes and memos…it's been so long since I've written anything, my handwriting's gotten terrible. It's embarrassing."

"Uh," said Junpei. "Really? That's…couldn't you do that at home? You're all alone here. It's…kinda weird."

Minako shrugged. "I'm alone here, but I'd be alone there, too. Doesn't really make a difference to me. I'd rather just finish what I'm doing before I turn in for the day. Not that I seem to be making any progress."

She held up what was, apparently, a previous attempt at handwriting practice. Junpei could sort of, if he really squinted and tried, make out the word "the" amongst the tangle of garbled chicken scratch writing, but several of the letters were totally unrecognizable.

"Better luck next time?" he suggested helpfully.

Minako laughed a frustrated little laugh. "Yeah," she agreed. "Let's hope so."

As they rode back towards home together in the car, Junpei took a deep breath. "Hey," he asked casually, "do you, uh, remember what day it is?"

"Today?" Minako frowned in thought. "I'm pretty sure it's Tuesday."

"Nah," said Junpei, shaking his head. "I mean, yeah, you're right, it's Tuesday, but…that's not what I meant. I mean, do you know what day of the year it is?"

That took a few more moments of quiet thought. "Oh," said Minako finally.

"Yeah," agreed Junpei gloomily. "Exactly."

"Junpei," Minako began, but he shook his head, cutting her off.

"Look," he said. "Okay, I'm not really a speech-making kind of a guy, but…I know that a lot's been going on lately, and that you're tired, and…shit's been getting really hard. You can't see, you got dumped, your boss shouts at you, and…look, I want you to get something, and get it right, okay? No matter how bad it gets, or how much shit hits the fan, or whatever...life sucks, sometimes, okay? You should get used to it. Just…just get used to real life, and getting over things, because…because you're gonna have to put up with it for a really long time. You're gonna live for a really long time, and I am not gonna ever let anything fucking happen to you ever again."

"Hey," murmured Minako.

Junpei, however, wasn't finished. "You're gonna get really old, like…like old people," he insisted. "Seriously fucking old. That's gonna suck, too. Old people get sick, and stuff stops working, and…it doesn't matter, because you can count on your pal Junpei to make sure that you get so old you can't even sit up straight in a chair anymore and…" Stopping, he frowned, and shook his head. "What I'm trying to say is," he tried again, "you don't have to worry about anything, because I.-!"

He felt Minako wrap her hand around his, and give it a comforting squeeze. "I know what you're trying to say," she told him. "Thank you, Junpei. And you're right, you know?"

"Huh?" asked Junpei. "Uh, of course I am. Wait, about what?"

Even though he couldn't see her face, Junpei could hear that Minako was smiling when she told him, "You're right, there's nothing to be worried about. I'm not going anywhere."

Junpei tried to relax a little. In the back of his mind, he could still see the image from his dream, of Minako's dead face, staring sightlessly up into the March sky, getting colder and farther away with every passing moment.

"Junpei?" asked Minako. "I mean it. I promise you. Everything's going to be all right."

Junpei realized that something was wrong with this conversation. After all, hadn't he come all the way out here to tell her that? So why was she now the one reassuring him?

"Yeah," he mumbled, driving with one hand to let her keep holding on to the other. "Yeah, of course it is."


	10. Allelujah

**Author's Preface**

**Allelujah**

**Author's Preface: **Sorry to put the author's note in a totally separate chapter, but I tried to include it in the next one, and honestly too many titles and headers all in one place just really hurt my eyes…this is a lot easier, visually. I swear, I won't make a habit of it, I know it's pretentious, but please bear with. Thanks for understanding.

The following collection is going to encompass and follow the rest of the series that began with **What Cannot Be Broken**, and most recently included **Piecekeeping** and **Messiah**. Because the actual plot-driven conflict is resolevd, all the stuff that remains is more introspective and character-driven, and so I felt that one giant, plot-heavy story wasn't going to really do what I need to do. Instead, this is going to be a collection of one-shots, snapshots, and short chaptered stories which will feature and focus on the characters and relationships from the rest of the series, and hopefully will tie up some loose ends and re-establish or permanently demolish some relationships.

Please feel free to let me know which characters, pairings, or relationships you're particular interested to see more of, here. I do have a plan, but I'd love to see what you guys are interested in. Plans can always be (and usually are) modified, right?

Thanks very much for reading this far, and I can't wait to get the chance to really go deeper into some of the minds and lives of these characters. Character stuff is my favorite! This will be fun

Oh, I said that last time, didn't I?

Well, it was fun, t hen, too, right? So, have I ever steered you wrong?

…Yeah, good call, don't answer that.

Sincerely and enthusiastically,

Ari

**Rei(g)n: Chapter One**

**First Story: Rei(g)n**

**Summary: **Minako, Junpei, and the rest of SEES take one final trip into the Velvet Room to tie up any available loose ends. In the process, Junpei and Minako share a few thoughts on loyalty and inspiration.

**Chapter One**

Three days after the return of Messiah, Minako and the rest of the group formerly known as SEES stood in the threshold of the doorway that led, ultimately, to the recesses of Minako's mind.

"I'm telling you," insisted Junpei, "there's gonna be nothing there. I mean, what's the point, right? She's got her persona back, so there no reason for any door, or room, or…whatever. So, like…"

Minako shook her head. "Maybe you're right," she insisted, "but either way, I don't think that getting across the nightmare room will be as easy as it was before."

"Huh?" asked Yukari. "Wait, why?"

Minako frowned. "My nightmares are different now," she murmured.

After a lot of heated debate over the past couple of days, Minako had eventually convinced her friends that she wasn't making the wrong decision in choosing to stay in Inaba. At first, they'd been horrified to hear that she wasn't coming with them, but in the end they'd had to see reason, one by one. Mitsuru approved of Minako's insistence that she couldn't just walk away from the position at the police station that she'd devoted herself to for so long. Akihiko and Fuuka, no doubt, were both at least partially relieved that she wouldn't be bursting back into Shinjiro's home town and throwing his life and feelings into a state of limbo again. Ken, who had made some very deep personal connections, in Inaba, seemed inclined to understand her point of view right from the start, and it had really been Yukari and Aigis whom Minako had spent the most time and trouble convincing.

"It's not an option," she'd said eventually, throwing up her hands and sighing. "I broke it, now I have to buy it. I touched people's lives, some of them for the worse. That's not something you just walk away from. It's hard to just forget. I know you understand."

"Yeah," Yukari had mumbled, shrugging. "Yeah, I guess…I guess that's true."

Still, none of them had been willing to leave her here alone without being certain that the trials in the Velvet Room really were over and done with for good. That was why, with only twenty four hours left until they all shipped out for Iwatodai, SEES was preparing to march as a unit into the place that contained the damaged part of her soul, just to make sure there was nothing left to worry about.

"What are we all waiting for?" muttered Akihiko, annoyed. "You guys are taking forever…if there's something in there, let's find it and take it out. If not, then no harm done, right?"

"Agreed," mumbled Ken. "Let's end this, already."

Junpei shrugged, stepped forward, and set his first foot on the ground of the room that contained Minako's nightmare interpretation of the Tartarus tower. "Sure," he began, "then let's just-!"

As soon as Junpei's foot touched the ground, the entire room went pitch black. Yukari shrieked.

"What's going on?" exclaimed Fuuka, inside Minako's mind. "Are you all right? What's happening in there?"

"Mina-tan!" shouted Junpei. "Hey, sound off, where are you?"

Minako, more than a little used to finding people without the use of her sight, didn't take long to grab his hand, which was groping around for her in the dark. She grasped him and pulled him closer to her, bumping him against her side as he struggled to get his bearings.

"New nightmares, huh?" he muttered.

"Sorry," replied Minako.

"Nah…it makes sense." Junpei sighed. "And hey, if something didn't go wrong, things would get boring…right?"

In the darkness, something shifted and made an audible but unintelligible groaning sound.

"Aw, hell, I take it back!" shouted Junpei. "Why do I even say stuff?"

"Great question," retorted Yukari, from somewhere to Minako's left. "Hang on, it's coming…"

Again, there was a groaning sound, only this time it was louder. Instinctively, judging the proximity from the volume of the noise, Minako suddenly ducked to one side, pulling Junpei along with her. They both tumbled to the ground, just in time to avoid the swipe of something large and blunt that just managed to graze Minako's hip as she went down.

"It's okay," called Akihiko, hurrying up from somewhere in the rear of the group. "Don't worry, I got this. Ziodyne!"

A bolt of lightning shot of the sky, and for just a moment the whole room was illuminated by the flash. For that one, brilliant second, Minako got a glimpse of a huge, thick-fingered hand-shaped shadow that was grabbing and reaching through the darkness, searching for victims to crush and mangle.

A cold little chill went down her spine as she remembered the spate of recent strangulation murders, and the man that Tohru had killed right before he'd had a chance to suffocate Minako to death. She could still hear Tohru's insane, madly relieved laugh as she closed her eyes and tried not to picture the one terrifying glimpse she'd had of that blood-soaked scene.

Unfortunately, she hadn't shut the memory out fast enough. Almost as soon as she thought of it, Tohru's worst, most bone-chilling laughter echoed through the darkness of Minako's nightmare room.

"Wow," whispered Yukari. "How do you ever get any sleep?"

"Laughter…should never be so murderous," observed Aigis quietly. "That was truly an unpleasant sound. Does that come from your nightmares, Minako-chan? I…I am sorry to hear that."

No kidding, though Minako. She felt Junpei squeeze her hand in the dark. "Jeez," he mumbled, "remind me that I really gotta make a point of vetting all your boyfriends, from now on. You are…you are just shit at relationship choices, and I mean that like I care."

"Akihiko," called Mitsuru. "Can you give us any more light?"

In response, Akihiko called down another bolt of lightning, and again Minako could see the room for a split second. The glimpse she did get showed her that there were at least three hand shadows, each of them moving relatively quickly across the room in the direction of the SEES members.

"The situation is…less than ideal," muttered Mitsuru, sounding frustrated.

Junpei nudged Minako in the ribs. "Showtime, leader," he reminded her.

Right, thought Minako, taking a deep breath. "Pair up," she shouted, "back to back, so that nothing can take advantage of your bad side. Everybody personas out, weapons ready. Fuuka?"

"I'm here, Minako!" replied Fuuka in Minako's head, sounding surprised.

"Can you tell me what they are?" asked Minako. "Actually, where they are would be great, too."

It took Fuuka a moment before she answered. "They're darkness type," she said eventually, as Minako felt the touch of another huge finger just in time to step smartly to one side. "And Junpei, there's one just rushing towards your…look out"

"Big surprise," muttered Junpei, dodging the blow that Fuuka had warned him about just in time.

"Weak to?" asked Minako, swiping at the darkness with her naginata, and hitting…something ,maybe. It felt like she hit something, although there was no cry of pain or anger, which she usually expected to hear when she hit a shadow.

"Um, light, actually," replied Fuuka. "Seems very…predictable, doesn't it?"

"You did receive your lowest marks in the creative arts, as I recall," remarked Mitsuru. "it stands to reason that the innermost parts of your psyche would be predictable."

"Oh, but you're great at cooking!" added Fuuka, helpfully.

Minako tried not to be insulted. There would be time for that later. Right now, there were other things to take her mind of the embarrassment of having a boring inner psychological sanctum. "Aki," she called, "when I say 'go,' I need you to light up the room. As soon as you see the shadow, Ken, you hit it with Hamaon. Then we wait two beats and do it again. Got it?"

"Got it!" announced Ken. He sounded excited, and it made Minako smile. Even if he tried to be serious and mature, it was clear that Ken, much like Akihiko, got a burst of youthful adrenaline out of a good fight.

"Minako-chan," asked Aigis. "What shall we do?"

Minako thought about that for a minute. "Don't get killed," she said, eventually. Ready, Aki? Go!"

The flash of light came almost instantly after Minako spoke, indicating that Akihiko had already poised his persona for the attack. Ken locked on to a startled, blinded hand shadow, and dissolved it successfully with Kala-Nemi's Hamaon attack.

"Yeah!" shouted Ken. "Hey, did you see that? We got it!"

"Nice," muttered Akihiko. Minako heard the smile in his voice, and she smiled back, even if he couldn't see her.

Junpei and Minako were now standing back to back, and so it was easy for her to hear when he leaned over and murmured to Ken who, back to back with Akihiko, wasn't too far away.

"Hey, Ken," whispered Junpei, with a note of mischievous innocence in his voice. "Don't you think Mina-tan's kinda cute when she takes control like that?"

Minako didn't have to see Ken to know that he'd probably turned an incredible shade of deep red. "Shut up," he mumbled angrily. Junpei just laughed.

Minako shook her head. She'd never quite been able to dissuade Ken of his persistent and ridiculous crush on her, and apparently he was still susceptible to jokes about it, even after years of experience and of being without Minako. "Focus, guys," she commanded. "Aki, Ken, let's try the lighting/light thing again, okay? Ready?"

"Ready!" announced Ken and Akihiko, almost at the same time.

Minako felt Junpei tense against her back as a shadow came a little too close for comfort. "Okay," she said. "Here…we…go!"

**Rei(g)n: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

A few more combination attacks from Akihiko and Ken, and the whole mess with the hand shadows was over. SEES was left standing in a still-darkened room, listening anxiously for the sounds of anything else approaching. They kept getting distracted by the crackling insanity of Tohru's panicked laughter, which broke through the otherwise eerie silence at apparently random intervals and sent them all shivering and holding tighter on to their weapons and evokers.

"Ow…" muttered Yukari. "My leg…"

"It is…unfortunate," grunted Aigis, sounding a bit pained, "having to battle in the dark, sight unseen. Minako-chan, again I commend you for an impressive feat. I was not until this moment fully aware of how distorting such a lack of sight can be."

Several of the others were muttering as well, and it sounded to Minako as though her friends had sustained a number of injuries during their harrowing, if victorious battle against the grasping hands.

"Damn," remarked Junpei, perhaps the only one who had made it out of the battle totally unscathed. "I guess I lucked out with a partner this time, huh? Check it out, not a scratch on me. Remind to pick you for my team every time, okay?"

Minako smiled. "We're all on the same team, remember?" She'd dismissed her persona when it had been clear that the battle was over, too busy assessing damages to bother with keeping focused on a persona that , with only part of her mind remaining, she would always have trouble controlling and summoning without passing out. She felt dizzy and a little bit sick, and remembered what it was that Igor had told her that first day in the Velvet Room, when she'd summoned Messiah to revive Tohru, and had found herself almost collapsing because of it.

"Messiah," she whispered, closing her eyes and wincing at the stab of exhaustion that shot through her and threatened to down her as the persona came back into being. "Salvation."

There was the soft sound of Messiah's movement as it took flight from the depths of Minako's soul. Minako smiled as she listened to the relieved sighs of her friends as they, one by one, received the healing rush that came from Messiah's power.

"You're a lifesaver, Minako," muttered Akihiko gratefully.

"Tell me something I don't know," retorted Junpei, sounding proud. Minako frowned.

As the rest of the team made its way haltingly towards what was, presumably, the other side of the room, Minako and Junpei hung back.

"Don't you think it's kinda weird," he asked her, "how this place is supposed to show your worst nightmares…but it doesn't? It only shows you the scary stuff that you see in your dreams, but not the big, awful, mind-blowingly horrible stuff that you see just before you wake up, you know?"

That was a deep sentiment, coming from Junpei, and Minako took a moment to think about it. At first, she wanted to contradict him. Tohru's terrifyingly murderous laughter, the tower of Tartarus and the seal beyond, the blackness of being blind…those things were terrible enough for her. The more she thought about it, however, the more she remembered other dreams, dreams so scarring and terrible that she'd never allowed herself to think about them during the light of day, because they never felt like dreams when she woke up. Instead, the felt like reality that had tried to take over her subconscious, with images so sure and tangible that they'd made her scared to even try to go back to sleep that night.

"Yes," she admitted. "Yes, you're right. I wonder why that is?"

Junpei grunted noncommittally. "Dunno," he said. "Maybe tough dreams are too hard for the shadows to figure out. Like, my worst nightmares always have a ton of people in them…so I guess that's too much for the shadows to put together. Easier for them to get the simple stuff, like thunderstorms, and cars, and…you know, stuff that they can be without having to try too hard."

That, thought Minako, would be a remarkably simple solution…and it also made perfect sense. Trust Junpei to come up with the one obvious thing that no one else had been able to figure out.

"Junpei," she began. "What are your nightmares like? I mean, the really bad ones?" She wasn't sure why she asked. Maybe it was something about the way his voice changed when he brought up that subject. It lost some of its usually casual tone.

"Wha-? Who the hell asks a question like that?" Junpei stammered. "Seriously, a man's dreams are personal. Or, uh…I guess they used to be. Seems like a stupid thing to say right now, huh?" He laughed, a little deprecatingly, and then sighed. "Tell you what, I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"Done," agreed Minako instantly.

"Oh." Junpei sounded a bit surprised. "Somehow, I think I was hoping you were gonna say no…"

Now, Minako was starting to get really interested, a little bit worried. "What's so bad that you can't tell your best friend about it?" she asked him. "Don't tell me that you're having _that_ kind of dream about someone we know…I mean, someone who isn't Rise."

"Hey! You said that we were talking about nightmares!" insisted Junpei. "That stuff's got nothing to do with nightmares…and anyway, there's no way I'd tell you about that. Even with his best friend, man's gotta have some boundaries, and shit."

Minako nodded, and waited.

"Yeah, um, so…" sighed Junpei. "Listen, you're not gonna like this, but…it's always you. I mean, how could it not be?"

"Me?" asked Minako, not sure she understood. "Wait, I'm your worst nightmare? That's…seriously?"

"What? No, no, not like that," insisted Junpei hurriedly. "No, not…not you, exactly, but, uh…look, I really hate bringing this up, but…I have lots of bad dreams about that one day in March. You know which one. Uh, not that you were 'there' or anything, cause you were sort of…'gone' already by the time I…you know what, forget it, I don't really want to talk about this. Forget I said anything."

Minako didn't need him to go on. She knew exactly what he was talking about, and she had entertained many similar dreams, about her last day on earth, before she'd joined with the Great Seal. She dreamed about the way the sun had looked that day, in the sky, and the sad, puzzled look on Aigis' face when Minako had told her not to cry.

She knew, of course, that she was lucky. Those were the things that she remembered, but her friends would have had other things to remember, things that both started and ended with her dead body baking in the sun on the rooftop. There was nothing she could do about that, nothing she could say to make those memories go away. There were no more apologies. As Junpei had made her painfully aware of, one day at Daidara's, she wasn't really sorry, in the end. Of course, she was sad that she'd caused them pain, miserable about it, in fact. She wasn't, however, sorry that she'd made the choice. She couldn't be. It had been the only right choice to make.

"Okay," she told Junpei. "You told me. Now it's my turn."

"Yeah?" asked Junpei. "Okay, let's hear it. I bet you dream about the same thing, right? That day, on the-!"

"No," interrupted Minako, shaking her head. "I do, but…that's not the worst one." She took a deep breath, calling to mind some things she usually tried exceptional hard not to imagine. "Ever since the day when we re-sealed Nyx, when all of us, SEES and the Inaba team were standing around at the base of the tower, I dream about you."

"Yeah, well," mumbled Junpei, "I mean, not surprised…after all, who wouldn't dream about me? I am pretty much a girl-magnet. Don't tell me, you probably dream about me without-!"

"Shut up," commanded Minako, doing her best to stifle a laugh. "You wish!" The laughter took some of the gravity out of the story she was telling, but also lightened the mood enough o make her really feel a bit better. She relaxed ever so lightly, as she finished her story.

"In my dream," she went on, "You're always standing there, holding your evoker to Nanako-chan's head, just like you did in real life."

"Ugh," muttered Junpei. "That one…right."

"And we're all staring at you," continued Minako. "Yosuke's shouting, and everyone's panicked, just like…but then, Naoto comes forward, and Naoto has a real gun." This was the hard part, and Minako found herself choking up a bit as she tried to get all of the words out. "She shoots you, and then you fall to the ground, and you drop Nanako, and you're bleeding all over the place, and then…"

Minako felt the tears starting to well up in her eyes. Before she had a chance to say another word, Junpei had his hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah, I think I've heard enough of that," he told her. "That's…wow, that's pretty vivid. Seriously, Mitsuru-senpai was wrong about you, you've got a pretty crazy imagination…sheesh."

"Yeah," whispered Minako. "Maybe you're right." It never felt to her as though it was imaginary. Whenever she had that dream, it always felt very, very real.

Junpei started walking across the room, following the rest of SEES, and Minako trailed after the sound of his footsteps.

"Why Naoto?" he asked suddenly.

Minako shrugged. "Who knows? I…I really have no idea, I actually like Naoto. Maybe it's because she carries a gun…"

"Or maybe," mused Junpei, "It's because she's really scary. I mean, come on, let's face it, she's good in a fight, but she is one scary chick."

"I don't think she's so scary," murmured Minako, feeling she really did owe it to Naoto, especially since it had essentially been Naoto who had held Yosuke back during that horribly moment three days ago during their confrontation.

"Dude," said Junpei. "You're the one who has creepy nightmares about her, not me. Then again, now that you've said something, maybe I'm gonna start having dreams too…why did we start talking about this, again?"

**Rei(g)n: Chapter Three**

**Chapter Three**

"Where's the door?" called Yukari. "Hey, I can't find it anywhere."

"Are we even in the right place?" muttered Akihiko. "I mean…I can't see anything…maybe we're on the wrong side of the room, or something."

Another blast of lightning from Akihiko's persona illuminated the area, and showed them all that they were, at least, at the direct opposite end of the room from the door that led back into the Velvet Room itself.

The lightning flash also showed Minako that the re-interpretation of Tartarus that came from her mind was still standing in the center of the room, although some amazing twist of luck and fate had led the entire party away from it during their battle against the hand shadows.

"So…." Began Yukari, "does that mean that Junpei was right? There's nothing here? It's all over?"

"Presumably," murmured Mitsuru. "It does…seem to be that way. But, what about Narukami? He, too, had a chamber here, one that was connected to his mind. Have they both…simply vanished? It seems strange…I do not trust it."

As Mitsuru led a further exploration into the apparent disappearance of the mind chambers, Minako left the group and headed for the tower.

She was aware, of course, that the tower wasn't real. At least, it was only real inside her mind, and she knew that anything which existed inside it was nothing more than a representation of the way things might work in the real world. That, of course, meant that when she opened the door at the top of the tower, there could be anything there. Whatever she could imagine or dream of in her wildest nightmares might be behind that door and yet…even as she knew that, even while she was sure of it, she wanted to check. Parts of her mind seemed to be vanishing, if the others were right about there being no more mind chamber at all. The seal needed tos till be there. Even if the real seal was elsewhere, Minako knew she'd sleep better at night, possibly a lot better if she opened that door and found the seal where she expected it to be.

"We have been here before," murmured Aigis. Minako reached out in the darkness and felt Aigis' mechanical form alongside her.

"Yes," agreed Minako. "That's true. But….things were different, then."

"No," replied Aigis thoughtfully. "I disagree. Once, your life was in danger. It was my duty to protect you. Now, your heart is in danger. The same duty befalls. It is harder, now, because we must protect you in a new way….and I do not think I know how. I think we are all wondering how. Do you understand?"

When Aigis spoke about protection, Minako thought back to lengths that Aigis alone had been willing to go to in order to rescue Minako from the seal. Part of Yosuke's anger at Minako came, she was sure, from an anger at Aigis, an anger that he had trouble directing at Aigis, whom he looked at, erroneously, as a robot without feelings, who wouldn't understand what anger was. Aigis herself was something that Yosuke struggled to deal with, and that on top of everything else just added fuel to the fire of the hatred that Minako was struggling to force herself to accept. In the end, she had to accept it, because she couldn't truly argue with it. Minako had been a victim, an unsuspecting victim, in a way. Aigis had been a murderer. She had killed Yu in order to bring Minako back, and there wasn't a way around that.

"Why'd you do it?" she asked. "I was so angry at the time, angry that I wasn't allowed to enjoy this. Why did you risk so much to bring me back? Not just your own life, but someone else's? Why would you do something like that? Junpei, too, he….with Nanako. Both of you, all of you, why?"

It took Aigis a long moment to respond, and through the silence they both listened to the sounds of their friends arguing about the missing door.

"Because," Aigis said finally, "I believe that you would have done the same for us. Am I incorrect in my assumption?"

Minako opened her mouth to say that yes, she would never kill someone to rescue someone else. That was wrong, intrinsically wrong, even if it hurt unbelievably to lose someone that she loved. Suddenly, the dream that she'd been talking about with Junpei came swimming back into her head, and she remembered what it felt like to see Junpei lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor. She remembered what happened at the end of the dream, the part she'd never intended to tell Junpei at all. At the end of the dream, she turned on Yosuke and the others, and she slaughtered them mercilessly, which was just as horrible, because when she woke up both Junpei's death and the death of the rest of her friends felt so real. It felt real, she knew, because somewhere, deep in the parts of her heart that would never be perfect, she believed it. It was true. She would fight for him, and she would kill for him, and for any of the others that they dared to take away from her.

"No," she whispered, nodding once. "No, you're not wrong."

Beside her, Aigis shifted slightly, and Minako thought she could hear a smile in her voice. "Then," replied Aigis, "I am not ashamed."

Aigis began walking back towards the others, and Minako turned to follow her. Just before leaving the tower, Aigis stopped for a moment.

"You are our leader," she reminded Minako. "We are…humans, I think. I am…as human as I will ever be. That means that I do not follow blindly. I do not follow without cause. A leader is someone who inspires trust. I follow, and Junpei-san follows because we know that you are there for us, and that you fear for us, and will fight for us. We will therefore fight for you. Do not worry. I know that we are right. I am…confident in my choices. In your choices."

With that, Aigis left Minako's side, and for a moment, Minako lingered, savoring the silence and the words that were still echoing around in her mind.

**Fin.**

**The Third Question**

**Second Story: The Third Question**

**Summary: **Dojima goes alone to confront Adachi in the Velvet Room. He has new questions, and for the first time, Adachi might have answers. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Dojima and Adachi

That night in early January, Ryotaro Dojima put Nanako to bed at nine o'clock. He read her a bedtime story, kissed her on the forehead, and then climbed the stairs back to the living room, where he found Yu sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

"I'm going out," he said.

Yu looked up at him. "Okay," said Yu. "Are you sure?"

It was a strange question, and Dojima wasn't certain at first how to answer it. The way Yu was looking at him, he got the creepy sensation that his nephew could see straight through his eyes and into his soul, in a bizarrely and alarmingly mature way that no teenage kid should have been able to look, not even a magical one like Yu.

"Yeah," he muttered. "I'm sure. Do me a favor; check on Nanako before you hit the sack tonight. Oh, and don't stay up all night, either. We've got a train to catch in the morning."

"Okay," agreed Yu. "Goodnight."

"'Night," said Dojima, before pushing open the door and stepping out into the deserted, late-night Inaba street.

He could have taken the car, but he didn't. The car would have gotten him there faster, but concentrating on the road, even when there was nobody else on it, took focus. Dojima wanted space to think, to figure out what he was going to say and just how he was going to say it. After everything that had taken place lately in and around the Velvet Room and the TV world, Dojima wasn't totally certain even what questions he now needed to ask. Things that had made sense before were foreign now. The world was a new place, with new possibilities, and new fears. There were things he wanted to believe. There were things he was afraid to believe.

He stalked down the sidewalk through the shopping district, and up to the Velvet Room door. Yu had said that only persona users should be able to find it, but for some reason now, Dojima could see it too. When he pushed it open, it swung away before him, and he stepped into the vaguely blue, suspiciously elegant place that all the bad things in his nightmares these days seemed to come from. Igor, that weird, long-nosed older guy, didn't seem to be there. Instead, Dojima found himself staring at the silent, brooding back of one of those same nightmares.

"Adachi," he barked.

Slowly, Tohru Adachi turned around. It was strange, thought Dojima, in the detective part of his mind that had managed to detach itself from the hatred. Adachi looked…older, somehow, than he had when Dojima had called him partner, or even when he'd held him captive at the station. There was something sunken and desperate in Adachi's face that Dojima had never noticed before, if it had even been there to begin with.

"Heh," mumbled Adachi. "So…you're here, huh? Guess I knew that was gonna happen, sooner or later."

"Yeah," agreed Dojima, lamely. Suddenly faced with Adachi like this, he wasn't as confident as he thought he'd be. The guy looked more human now than he ever had before, even in this environment which was so weird, twisted, and wrong. Maybe that was the reason. Adachi's humanity stood out in this place, in a way that it might not have in parts of the world that Dojima was more ready to understand.

"So, what do you want?" asked Adachi. "You gonna arrest me again? Cause, I gotta be honest with you, it wouldn't work. I can't leave this place for very long. Signed a contract, keeps me from running away." He shrugged. "I mean, if you want to try, I'm game, but…"

"I have questions," said Dojima.

"Oh, sure," sighed Adachi. "Yeah, you usually do. Man…what a drag."

Stretching both arms over his head and yawning dramatically for emphasis, Adachi strode over and flopped down in Igor's abandoned chair. Crossing one leg over the other, he leaned back, and spread his arms wide in a magnanimous gesture.

"Shoot," he said. "You can have…three questions. Yeah, three questions. Go for it."

Dojima blinked. "Why three questions?" he asked. "Why?"

Adachi frowned. "Who knows? That's how many I feel like answering today. You gonna take it, or leave it?"

Instinctively, Dojima thought about shouting at Adachi, insisting that he retract that arbitrary number. Dojima was, after all, the senior partner, the man in control, the only one of them on the right side of the law, and the one with the legal authority. Still, that didn't matter here. None of the real world laws seemed to apply here, which was evident just by Adachi's continued presence in the room. It would be a waste of time to try and bend this place to Dojima's will, especially since Adachi's status as the whatever of this Velvet Room might actually give him some power that Dojima wasn't expecting. He'd have to be cautious, maybe play Adachi's game. That rankled, and he scowled, but there wasn't any way around it.

Dojima cleared his throat. It was easier, he realized, if he didn't try to make eye contact with Adachi. Just looking at him made his blood start boiling, and something else, something like misery began to pool at the back of his soul. "Why'd you run?" he asked, his voice coming out raspy and gruff, hiding the feelings that he was working against.

"When?" asked Adachi languidly. "The first time, or the second time?"

"Both," clarified Dojima. "No, nevermind. When you ran from the prison, why did you-?"

"Ah, whoa!" interrupted Adachi, holding up a hand. "Hey, be careful how you phrase that. You don't want it coming out sounding like your second question, right?" He grinned, and Dojima glowered at him.

"Answer it," grated Dojima.

Adachi nodded slowly. "Yeah, fair. Okay." Frowning for a moment in thought, he bit his lip. "Tough question, detective. Looks like you haven't lost your edge. Good for you." He laughed, and Dojima felt as though he was being mocked, although he wasn't really surprised. "Anyway, I didn't really plan on running, for a while there. Nah, after Inaba, I was ready to be a model prisoner…ready to take what I got, and like it. Well…okay, maybe I never liked it, but…I guess part of me felt like I deserved it, in a weird way. I'm not…exactly sorry. I won't go that far, but…I was gonna suck it up."

This time, Dojima didn't say anything. He'd figured out the rules of the game. Instead, he waited for Adachi to quit stalling and get to the point.

"You know what they say about hope, right?" Adachi went on. "Hope…it came from Pandora's box, or something. From the place that we got all that bad shit from, lies, and cheating, and death, and…all that other stuff. Hope's like that. It makes you feel like you've got a chance at winning, even when you know you really don't. I guess that's why I ran. It was after I saw in some newspaper that Yu had died. I was like…how is that possible? Yeah, I wanted to know if it was true, but it also got me thinking…life's short, and his was…his was short as hell. He'd said some weird shit about me still having a chance, and I thought…maybe he was right. Maybe I could start over." Adachi shrugged. "Well, look how that turned out, right? I guess in the end, hope's what did me in... Whoa, that's kinda poetic…yeah, I like it." Again, he laughed. "Okay, next question."

Dojima wasn't sure he believed that. He'd heard before, from Adachi, that he'd escaped just for a chance to see if the news and rumors about Yu's death were true. In Dojima's mind, he could picture the scene of Adachi getting the paper in his prison cell, and turning to the article that talked about Yu's untimely and mysterious death. In Dojima's mind, the story always ended differently from the way Adachi described it. In his mind, he saw Adachi laughing and grinning at the article, amazed and delighted to find that the enemy who'd locked him up had gotten what was coming to him after all. Just thinking about it made Dojima grit his teeth, and shake his head, trying to force the images out and back to the depths of unconscious reverie where they belonged.

"Why didn't you kill me, when you had the chance?" asked Dojima. "In the hospital, when you and I were there, alone…you could have thrown me into the TV and no one would have had any idea what had happened. You would have walked away from that without a scratch, and I would have been off your back. Why didn't you? You didn't think I was a real threat? You didn't I would figure it out?"

That seemed to take Adachi momentarily by surprise. He raised an eyebrow at Dojima. "Wait, you…you think I was gonna kill you? No…jeez, you still don't get it. Ameno-sagiri, or the power of persona, or whatever it was that got a hold of me…it wasn't random. It didn't just make me start randomly killing people, it was…it has to do with desire. The things I really wanted suddenly seemed like insanely good ideas, even though if I had my right mind sorted out, I would have seen why they weren't…maybe. Probably. I got angry. I wanted to hurt people. I wanted to hurt those women. Hey, some days, I still do. Maybe they did deserve it, maybe they didn't, and I'm not the one to ask. But…jeez, Dojima-san, what would I want to kill you for?"

For the first time, Dojima listened to that story without trying to shut Adachi up. He'd heard about persona and the TV world, and Ameno-sagiri from Adachi before, but when they'd last gone through this, it had seemed like a bunch of made-up fairytale crap. He'd hated just having to listen to it. Now, though, now that he'd seen the TV world for himself, it made sense, and he hated the fact that it made sense. Things that had been black and white and so obviously evil were suddenly uncertain and frustrating. He hated this place, hated it just as much now as he had the first day that Hanamura kid had knocked him in here. Maybe even more. Definitely more, in fact.

"I was going to find you out, sooner or later," insisted Dojima. "You had to know that."

"Not exactly. I mean, it's not like it was really you who caught me, even you gotta admit that," Adachi reminded him. "But, hey…seriously, that's what you think? You…still don't have a clue, do you? Dojima-san, I would have killed…okay, maybe that's a bad phrase to use here, but I would have killed just to have you give me a couple of words of praise. I wanted you to like me; I wanted you to tell me that I was going places with my career. I looked up to you…and you never got that, not once. You never had shit to say to me except that I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to kill you, I wanted to be you. Sure, it made me angry, but…man, forget it. I wish I hadn't said any of that. Well, it's out now. In the end, doesn't matter much, I guess." He shrugged, then added, with a mischievous glint in his eye, "hey, you ever think about this? Maybe if you'd had some of that praise for me, maybe if you'd given me some of what I wanted, I wouldn't have gone so nuts. Maybe I would have been satisfied enough not to kill those people. You ever think about that?"

All the time, thought Dojima, although there was no way in hell that he was going to say that out loud.

"Yeah, well, don't," muttered Adachi. "I'm just being a pain in the ass. Trust me; it wouldn't have made a difference. It was kind of out of both our hands. Hey, might have made it worse, actually, because if you'd given me what I wanted, I wouldn't have had to want it anymore…then, maybe I would have killed you. Who knows?" He sighed. "You know, I actually really liked the idea of being partners. It was you who never got what that meant."

That barrage of contradictory information left Dojima reeling. He spent a few moments trying to process it, while Adachi waited, watching him.

"You know what?" asked Adachi. "This is kinda bringing me down. You got one more question, so hurry up and ask it before I decide to go off and kill some shadows or something. Clock's ticking."

As soon as he'd asked the second question, Dojima had thought he'd known what his third question was going to be. It was originally going to be about Nanako, about why she'd been targeted. That was the logical question to ask, although Dojima wasn't sure that he even really wanted to know the answer. It didn't matter, either way, because when he opened his mouth, a question came out that even he hadn't realized was lying in wait.

"Do you love her?" he asked, surprising himself. "Arisato. Do you love her?"

Adachi's mouth fell open in shock. "Wh-what the hell?" he stammered. "That's your question? Why…why the fuck do you even want to know?"

Dojima didn't have an answer to that, but he decided it would be better not to let Adachi know. Instead, he just sat there, impassively, waiting for his answer, while his mind worked behind his eyes to try and sort out where the hell that had even come from.

Adachi's face contorted suddenly, and there was pain, genuine pain and sadness in its hardened lines. It was a human pain, a pain that Dojima could feel himself responding to and recognizing at his very core. He knew what that look meant. It was a look he could have seen in the mirror, after meeting Chisato for the first time and realizing that he had feelings for her so strong that he couldn't keep them at bay. It was a look that he saw every now and then when he closed his eyes and looked into the depths of his own tortured mind, a look that meant loss and anguish, and desperation, a look that meant there were some things that no amount of bravado could push or force away. It was the most real thing that Dojima had ever seen in Adachi's eyes, eyes that suddenly and irrationally were reflecting his own.

"Yeah," muttered Adachi. "I do. I love her."

Dojima almost said something, almost forgot himself and stepped forward to try and comfort a man who was instantly a member of his own kind again. It was only when he shook himself and remembered who he was talking to that he got a hold of his intentions and forced himself to stay put and silent. This was Adachi, the murderer, the betrayer, the Judas who had ruined his life. This man wasn't worthy of his sympathy.

"That's it," mumbled Adachi, standing up and turning away again. "That's all you get. Now get out."

There was something dangerous in Adachi's voice, something that had Dojima's hand immediately on his gun which was still in his belt. Adachi, however, made no move towards Dojima, and after a tense beat, Dojima decided to head back into the shopping district.

He was at the door, ready to push it open, when something turned him around and prompted him to speak. "Adachi," he called.

"Yeah?" asked Adachi, sounding strained. "What?"

Dojima shook his head, and left the room.

As he walked back home, it started to rain, which somehow seemed lke it fit the scene that was playing out over again in Dojima's head. He turned corner after corner until his hand was on his own doorknob, and he knew before he went in that he'd find Yu awake, still on the sofa despite his orders, waiting up for him.

"Hey," he called, pushing open the door. "I'm home."

The humanity of that moment in Adachi's eyes would not, he knew, help him sleep any better at night.

**Fin.**

**Carrying the Torch: Chapter One**

**Third Story: Carrying the Torch**

**Summary: **Ken finds Kanji brooding alone at Junes, and they share a moment of crush-induced sympathy. This results, ultimately, in a messy display of masculinity from several members of both teams.

**Character Focus: **Kanji, Ken, Junpei, Yu

**Chapter One**

Ken was wandering around the Junes food court, considering a topsicle, despite the cold weather, when he noticed someone hunched over miserably at the far corner table. He hazarded a few steps closer, and saw what he'd already guessed to be true. The spiky, blond mass of brooding dejection in the chair was Kanji Tatsumi.

"Um…hey, Kanji-san," called Ken. "Are you, um…are you okay?"

Kanji, with all of his tattoos and menacing eyebrow raises, wasn't the sort of guy that Ken would usually want to get to know. When Ken had first met him, his instinct had been to steer as clear as possible from a guy who looked like he both could and would crush him physically the moment he put a foot wrong or said something that might have been misinterpreted. It had only been after their mutual foray into the nightmare world, where they'd discovered that they shared both a fear and love of childhood toys that Ken had realized Kanji might be someone he'd really like to spend some time with. After that, it hadn't taken long for the two of them to start spending lots of time together, and Kanji had quite honestly been the person that Ken had looked forward to seeing most when Junpei had invited him to join the others on a Christmas trip to Inaba. After the confrontation in the Velvet Room, Ken had, on the advice of the rest of the SEES team, stayed pretty far away from Junes, but…he'd been kind of hoping that he might get the chance to see Kanji at least once before he left.

Kanji swiveled his head around to blink at Ken out of sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes. "Huh? Oh, Ken-kun…it's you. Hey." Straightening up in his chair, he cleared his throat, and put on his best, most manly voice, one that wasn't fooling Ken for a second. "Yeah, sure, I'm fine. Just, uh, you know, catching a break. Yeah." Frowning, he scratched his head contemplatively with one finger, then sighed. "Uh, look, about what happened the other day…it wasn't right, what Yosuke said to Minako. I mean, I'm not…really sure exactly what's going on here, but I know that was out of line, you know? So…sorry."

Ken nodded. "It's okay," he assured him. "You didn't say it." It wasn't actually okay, thought Ken. The things that Ken would like to do to Yosuke involved a lot of loud, angry comic-book sounds like "wham!" "Bang!" and "POW!" Ken decided it was probably best not to say that part out loud. Either way, it wasn't Kanji's fault. When Kanji got angry, people noticed. This time, Kanji had just been confused, which was sort of a typical thing. Anyway, he had nothing to do with this one, as far as Ken could see.

"Yeah," agreed Kanji, nodding, and looking a little relieved. "Right. Thanks."

Glancing around, Ken frowned. "Where's Naoto-san?" he asked. She and Kanji were very often together, although even Ken had noticed that their togetherness had a lot to do with Kanji following Naoto around like a sick puppy. Watching the way Kanji acted around her actually made Ken just a little bit uncomfortable, since he was aware, for the first time, of what he probably looked like when he found himself trailing after Minako. He was better about it now than he'd been before, back at Gekkoukan, but she still had this way of making him turn his head in the middle of a thought or a conversation, and now eh could picture the way his face probably looked just like Kanji's when he did it, which was…not a good thing, not at all.

"Naoto? Who knows?" Kanji looked up at Ken, and there was so much misery in his face that Ken forgot about being embarrassed. "Probably off with Yosuke, again…guess they've been together a lot, these last few days." He scowled.

"Ah," murmured Ken. This, he realized, was a very delicate situation, far more delicate than anything he'd wanted to get involved in. Still, now that he'd started it…what exactly would Junpei do, here? Whatever it was, thought Ken, it was probably the opposite of what he should do.

"You ever had a crush before, Ken?" asked Kanji, suddenly. "Like…on a girl?"

"Have I…wait, on a girl? What else would I have a crush on?" asked Ken, his eyes widening in surprise.

For some reason, both Kanji and Ken sat in silence for the next few moments, both of them flushing bright red.

"It's just,'" moaned Kanji, apparently unable to stop himself now that he'd started, "there's always somebody else. No matter what I try to do, there's always somebody else who does it better, or first…I mean, she's always got someone else to look at, you know?"

Ken, who had been forced to watch as the love of his life dated pretty much every single guy at Gekkoukan High, knew. He knew very, very well. "Kind of," he muttered.

There was clearly nothing else to be said, as far as Ken was concerned. The two boys sat opposite each other in mutually appreciative misery, sympathizing in brooding silence while the world went on around them.

"Whoa," said Junpei, walking out of the grocery department and up to Kanji and Ken's table. "What happened to you guys? You look beat…"

There was a moment, there, when Ken had the opportunity to say something. He probably, he knew, could and should have done something in that split second window to prevent Junpei from catching on.

Unfortunately, he wasn't fast enough.

"Ohhhh," murmured Junpei, nodding slowly and knowingly. "I get it…I know what's up here. Yeah, there's only one thing that can make a guy look the way you two do, like his whole world's just fallen apart…and that's a girl, right? You guys are having girl trouble? Good thing I showed up when I did! Hey, Junpei Iori, chick magnet is on the case!"

"Don't say 'on the case,'" grunted Kanji. "Sounds like something she'd say…"

Ken blinked at Kanji in surprise. Wow, thought Ken. Okay, this guy had it even worse than he'd originally thought…

"

**Carrying the Torch: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

"What about you?" asked Kanji, with just a hint of maliciousness in his voice. "You seen Rise lately?"

Junpei shrugged "Nah, I've been, you know, letting things chill out, kinda. I mean, stuff got weird between us when that all went down in the Velvet Room, so I figure I'll give her some time to figure out how much she misses me, right?"

Ken and Kanji exchanged a look.

"You're um…you're kind of an idiot, Junpei-san," muttered Kanji. "Why don't you just get her some flowers or something? Girls like flowers. I think. Uh…'cept Naoto, Naoto doesn't like flowers. She doesn't like…anything that other girls like, far as I know." He sighed.

Junpei looked as though he had decided not to have heard Kanji's remark about his intelligence. "Well, then, that's what we need to figure out," he informed them, sitting down backwards in one of the chairs, and folding his arms over the top of it, frowning in intense thought. "What does Naoto-kun really like? Cause, everybody likes gifts. Girls, all girls definitely like gifts, I know that's true."

"I try giving her stuff," insisted Kanji. "I do, I give her lots of stuff…it's just, she never likes it. She's all sweet about it, but…she never wears it. Like that hat I gave her, that one time, at Christmas…guess where I found it?"

"Where?" asked Ken, not sure he actually wanted to know.

"On Teddie," mumbled Kanji.

"Whoa, wait." Junpei looked genuinely surprised. "She…she re-gifted it? That's…that's bad, man. That's like, the shun to end all shuns…"

Kanji buried his face in his hands. "Like I don't know that," he croaked.

Junpei bit his lip. "So, Naoto doesn't like girly stuff…but you do like girly stuff. See, that's the problem right there, you're just not connecting. "

"Maybe we should ask Minako," suggested Ken. "She…usually has good ideas about this sort of thing."

Junpei and Kanji both instantly shook their heads at him. "No way" insisted Junpei. "No, this is a man's job, okay? No reason to get Mina-tan involved in this…that'd be pussying out!"

"Uh, probably not the best time to go to Minako for help, anyway," agreed Kanji." No offense, but…every time she gets involved in something, seems like she kinda makes it worse…"

Ken was offended, and he could see by the look on Junpei's face that Junpei wasn't going to stand for that sort of thing either. Kanji must have noticed as well, because he put both hands up in front of his face, and hastened to correct the error.

"No, hey, n-nothing like that," he stammered. "I just mean that, like, with all the shit that's gone down between her and the others, maybe now's not the best time to bring her into this, okay? That's all I meant, you don't gotta look so pissed off…"

In the back of his mind, Ken wondered who would win in a confrontation between Kanji and Junpei. Junpei was amazing with a persona, but probably couldn't punch nearly as hard or effectively as Kanji could. It would really all depend on the circumstances…and whose side was Ken supposed to take?

Luckily, he was saved from having to figure that out by the sudden and opportune arrival of Yu Narukami, who strolled up through the food court just as Junpei and Kanji were starting to square off.

"Hey guys," said Yu. "What's going on here? You look…a little tense." His voice was wary, and Ken saw that he was standing at the ready, legs slightly apart, as though preparing for some sort of action. The events of the past few days, Ken realized with a little inward sigh, had put a lot of people on edge, and Yu, the perfect leader, had probably gotten stuck in the middle of most of it. Not that Ken really cared. As far as he was concerned, Yu could have done a ton more to help Minako out, and for some reason, just…hadn't.

Suddenly, Kanji lost interest in Junpei, distracted by Yu's approach. "Hey," he said, turning to Ken, "this guy…this is the guy, the one guy who has all the answers. He's like…a romance king, or something, all the girls are crazy about him."

"What?" Now Yu looked slightly alarmed. "Kanji-kun, what are you talking about?"

"Senpai," begged Kanji, placing both hands together in a gesture of genuine supplication, "please, I'm begging ya. We need your help."

While Junpei sulked at the table, Kanji outlined the whole issue with Naoto to his team leader. The more Kanji explained, the more uncertain and uncomfortable Yu looked, until Ken wasn't sure if Kanji was actually making the problem worse by going to Yu for help.

"And this guy," finished Kanji, jerking a thumb in Junpei's direction, "He's hopeless. He and Rise have a thing, right, but he's not sure how to get her back on his side, so…"

"So?" asked Yu helplessly.

"So," insisted Kanji, "what are we supposed to do?"

Yu took a moment to think, apparently very hard, about that question. While he stood there, frowning, Kanji watched him as though at any moment, he was about to open up and deliver the pearl of wisdom that would make the world begin turning the right way up on its axis again.

"Kanji," muttered Yu eventually. "What you're asking me to do, essentially, is to keep Naoto away from Yosuke, right? And…Yosuke is pretty much my best friend. There's…a real conflict of interests, here. I'm not sure I can help you."

Kanji's face fell. He looked instantly crushed, as though his idol had just fallen.

"Sorry," mumbled Yu, obviously embarrassed. "It's…it's not that I don't think the two of you would make a good couple, it's just…"

"Nah, Yu's right," interjected Junpei. "Best friend's a best friend. Some lines, you just don't cross. I hate the guy's guts, but that doesn't change the code. Look man, I've got another idea. You're not gonna like it, but…hear me out."

Dejectedly, Kanji slumped back into the chair next to Junpei. "What is it?" he asked.

For some reason, Junpei turned and looked straight at Ken. Ken gulped. There was something about this that didn't' feel quite right…

**Carrying the Torch: Chapter Three**

**Chapter Three**

"Um, hey, Naoto-san," mumbled Ken.

Junpei had informed Ken that he'd probably find Naoto at the shrine, since Junpei himself had seen her there more than once over the past few days. Ken wasn't sure what she was praying for, but she looked awfully serious, even for Naoto, who typically wore a thoughtful, less than exuberant expression on her calculating face.

As Ken approached, Naoto turned around and smiled at him, gesturing for him to join her. "Ah, Ken-kun," she murmured. "I'm glad to see you…it has been a few days since we've had any contact. I was worried that you might be…disappointed in me."

"Disappointed?" asked Ken, surprised. "Um, no…why"

Naoto sighed. "I fear that I have been remiss in my behavior, ever since that unfortunate encounter in the Velvet Room. While I should have been spending my efforts on mending the bonds that have been broken between our leaders, I have instead felt…listless and distrait. It is a strange feeling. Perhaps I am coming down with an illness, of some kind."

"Um…I'm sorry," replied Ken, not sure what else to say. "I, uh, can come back another time, if you're not feeling well."

Naoto didn't appear to hear him. She was frowning at something just past his shoulder, although when Ken glanced over to see what she was looking at, there didn't seem to be anything there.

"Doesn't it seem strange to you," she asked, "that such tightly forged bonds are so easily broken? The things that we fought for, that we held so dear to us…they are damaged by such a little altercation in a single moment. It gives one pause…makes one wonder if it is worth one's while to create connections with people who are so changeable and easily swayed."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Naoto was talking about Yosuke. His violent reaction to Minako's relationship with Adachi had shocked all of them, even his own closest friends. Maybe she was talking about Minako, too, whose unexpected allegiance switch had startled all of them, even SEES…everyone, in fact, except for Junpei, apparently.

Still, Naoto seemed sad in a totally different, more personal way, and it made Ken feel sad, too, although he wasn't sure exactly why. Maybe it was the lost look in her eyes, or the fact that she was asking him, a fourteen year old kid with no relationship experience to speak of, for an opinion.

"I'm terribly sorry," said Naoto, clearing her throat. Her eyes refocused on Ken's and she looked a bit more alert than she had the moment before. "I am…speaking in enigmas, am I not? I am sure that you have had enough of that sort of nonsense, after the fallout of recent events. Well." She nodded, more to herself than to him. "That's that, then. What can I do for you, Ken-kun? Have you come to say goodbye? I was sad, indeed, to hear that you and the rest of your friends would be leaving for the island, soon. Much though it may seem otherwise, now, we have greatly enjoyed the time that you all have spent with us."

"I…have to go back to school," Ken reminded her, although he knew that wasn't what she meant.

"Of course," agreed Naoto.

There was a moment of laden silence, during which Ken suddenly felt small, as though he, much like Kanji the day before, was watching one of his idols slowly crumble to the ground. It was unpleasant, and it took him a moment to shake himself and to remember that he was here on a very specific mission, one that he'd been entrusted with, frankly against his will, by Kanji and Junpei.

"Um, Naoto-san," he began again, trying to sound like the confident Bro that he was apparently expected to become. "There's, uh, something I want to talk to you about."

"Certainly," agreed Naoto, nodding. "Anything you like."

"Right," muttered Ken. "Um…so…how do you, uh, feel about Kanji-san?"

Naoto's eyes widened in surprise. Ken thought, or perhaps wished that just for a moment, she looked a bit impressed. "Oh dear," she said. "Are we really going to talk about that?"

"W-well, not if you don't want to," stammered Ken quickly, resisting the urge to turn and bolt as fast as his legs would carry him. "It's just, that, uh, I think he kinda really likes you, and…so…um…I…"

That was it. It was all that Ken had in him. His words sputtered out and gave up on him, and he was left staring at Naoto helplessly. She gave him a kind, understanding sort of smile, and sighed.

"Is he under the impression," she asked, "that I am not aware of that fact?"

Ken had no response to that. He actually wasn't sure.

"It is a shame," continued Naoto philosophically, "but perhaps in this one respect, I am more feminine even than Rise-chan. It is typical of girls, is it not, to reject those that are kind to them, or those who would care for them, and to pursue, instead, the ones that are out of reach? That is, at least, what I have read about the stereotypes surrounding women. It seems unfortunately apt, in this circumstance."

"That…sounds about right," agreed Ken, thinking of Minako's choice to ignore him and pursue, instead, people who either went into comas or turned out to be serial killers.

"So," finished Naoto, "in answer to the question that you asked; no, I am sorry. I am unable to express any romantic feelings for Kanji-kun, much as I will always respect and care for him as a colleague. He, at least, understands the nature of loyalty…and for that I am grateful to him, but I have nothing else to offer."

"Um…okay." Ken nodded. That wasn't of course, the answer he'd hoped for, but it was honest, and at least this entire debacle was over.

"Forgive me for asking," said Naoto, "but…it does seem strange that Kanji-kun would put you up to this. He is…not usually the type to send a child to fight his battles."

"Wasn't Kanji," muttered Ken. "Junpei did it."

Naoto raised an eyebrow. "Aha….that seems more plausible. Spending his time meddling in the affairs of others, rather than working to right his own wrongs with Rise-chan, I see. Well, perhaps we shall meddle as well, in that case."

Reaching into her pocket, Naoto pulled out her cell phone. Dialing a few numbers, she held it up to her ear. "Rise-chan? Yes, I am…wait, what? No, please listen. There is a matter I would like to discuss with you, concerning Junpei Iori…"

Ken decided it was time for him to get out of there, fast. He ran for it.

**Carrying the Torch: Chapter Four**

**Chapter Four**

As Kanji stepped through the door to Marukyu Tofu, he overhead Rise finishing up a conversation on the phone.

"No, seriously?" she was saying, sounding incensed. "That's…I mean, come on, I figured that even he would do something like that himself…oh, wow, wait, hang on…no, no, I promise, I'll call you back. Trust me, I know exactly how to handle this."

She slammed her cell phone down on the counter, and spun around with a remarkably dazzling Risette original smile on her face. "Kanji-kun!" she said, beaming at him. "It's great to see you!"

Kanji swallowed nervously. Junpei, he knew, was crouching somewhere in the shadows, or the lack thereof, trying to see and hear what went on inside the tofu shop. Kanji had a job to do here, and as a good guy, he wasn't gonna let himself let Junpei down. This was a man's moment.

Drawing himself up to his full height, he gave Rise a forced smile that made his face feel a bit stretched and funny. "Uh, hey, Rise-chan," he mumbled. "Sure, nice to see you too, uh…what, you still working? You know, uh, bunch of those SEES guys are going back to Iwatodai pretty soon…do you know if Junpei's going with 'em?"

Rise frowned and haughtily tossed her hair. "No, I don't know. And I don't care. Why should I? It's not like he's paid any attention to me ever since that thing in the Velvet Room. I figured he'd at least call, but…nope, nothing. Not one little thing. So good riddance, really. He might as well just get lost, as far as I'm concerned."

Yikes, thought Kanji. That didn't sound good at all. "Aw, come on," he mumbled, thinking as fast as he could, which frankly wasn't very fast, and he knew it. "Uh, I'm sure that's not it…hey, give the guy a chance, he's probably just been, uh…busy. Yeah, really busy with all that SEES stuff. Right?"

"I told you," insisted Rise, "I don't care what he's busy with. I don't even want to talk about Junpei." She sighed heavily, and then suddenly turned on Kanji with the scariest look in her eyes that he had ever seen there. There was something almost…hot in the way she was looking at him, and the usually peppy glint in her eyes was now suddenly predatory.

"But Kanji," she cooed, sidling slowly closer to him as he stood stock still with growing panic. "Now that Junpei's out of the picture, I'm starting to realize that maybe I've been missing something important all along…and that's you, Kanji. You've always been there for me, and you're such a nice guy…so brave, and so manly…wow, I don't know why I never saw it before, but you're really much more my type than Junpei ever was."

Rise took two quick steps forward and placed both hands on Kanji's shoulders, staring into his eyes and fixing him to the spot with total terror. "Wh-wh-wha, uh, buh, wait…ah…" was all he managed to say, as Rise's twinkling eyes bored farther and farther into his fear-paralyzed soul.

Suddenly, there were pounding footsteps on the pavement outside, and the door to the tofu shop burst open as Junpei came barreling in, eyes blazing frantically as he shoved himself in between Kanji and Rise.l

"What the hell is going on here?" he shouted.

Kanji blinked at him. "What the hell are you asking me for? She's your girlfriend, so you figure it out!"

With that, Kanji moved himself as far across the room as he could, making sure that there was tons of space between him and Rise. Part of him wanted to cut and run for it, but the part of him that still felt obligated to Junpei for seeing him through this mess wouldn't let him leave. Instead, he stood there and watched while Junpei wrung his hands and did his best to get Rise to meet his eyes.

"Wait, seriously?" asked Junpei. "No, you're not…with Kanji? Really?"

Rise glared at him. "No, not really," she informed him. "I was just trying to get your attention."

Kanji wasn't sure if he should be relieved, disappointed, or pissed off. "That's…that's not cool, man," he mumbled, still trying to sort his way through those emotions.

Turning the glare on him, Rise snapped, "you stay out of this. Actually, you deserve everything you got, after sending poor Ken to proposition Naoto-kun for you. And you," she added, whirling around on Junpei again. "You did pretty much the exact same thing. That's why Kanji's here, isn't it? To ask me about you? What are you both, twelve? Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?"

"Please," begged Kanji miserably, inching farther and farther away. "Please, stop shouting…"

"Hey, Rise," began Junpei. "It's not like that. Look, I wanted to see you, I just-!"

"You're just a coward, is that it?" interrupted Rise, looking almost apoplectic, and standing on her tiptoes the way she did when she unconsciously knew that she needed more intimidating height. "You're both just cowards…and you call yourselves men."

"You know how much of a man I am," murmured Junpei, apparently going for the seductive approach. Kanji winced. Bad move, he thought.

Rise almost spat out the words as she took him by the arm and flung him towards the door. "Get out!" she shrieked. "Both of you, get out of here!"

Junpei gave up. Kanji was relieved. He didn't like the idea of giving this any more of a try. Together, they turned around and strode as quickly as they could out of the shop, hopefully without looking too much as though they were retreating.

"That…sucked," muttered Kanji, when they were far enough away from the shop to be really considered "out."

"Complete and total mission failure," agreed Junpei miserably. "Man…I feel like crap. Did she really have to call us cowards, like that? Wasn't all the screaming enough?"

"Hey, guys!" called Ken, hurrying up to them from the street. "I'm so glad I found you! Naoto-san juts called Rise-san, and I don't know what's happening, but…"

He stopped, mouth still hanging open, apparently seeing the dark looks on Kanji and Junpei's faces.

"Oh," said Ken. "Um. Too late?"

Junpei sighed. "Look," he said, passing one arm around Kanji's shoulders, and the other around Ken's. "If there's anything we've learned today, it's this."

"Call your girlfriend?" suggested Kanji helpfully. "Uh, before she goes insane?"

Junpei shook his head. "Nah, nothing like that. You don't get it. What we've learned today, men, is the most important, number one rule of the Bro Code."

Kanji waited. Judging by the look on Ken's expectant face, this was going to be a new one for him, too.

"Bros before hoes, man," muttered Junpei. "Bros before hoes."

**Fin.**

**Recovery**

**Fourth Story: Recovery**

**Summary: **When Yosuke arrives to help Yu and Dojima pack for the return trip to Yu's parents' place, Dojima shares an unexpectedly paternal moment with that Hanamura kid. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Dojima, Yosuke

"One more time," instructed Dojima, as he, Yu, and Nanako stood upstairs in Yu's bedroom, surrounded by bundles of clothes, gadgets, and other things that Yu was trying to pack for the long train trip home.

Obediently, Nanako stepped on to the stuffed suitcase that they were in the process of packing. Then she glanced back at Dojima uncertainly.

"Go on," insisted Dojima. "You won't fall. We won't let you."

Nanako shrugged, grinned, and then began to jump up and down on the top of the suitcase, looking giddier and more gleeful every time she came down on the lid and bounced up again. Just as it began to look as though the suitcase might really and finally close, the doorbell rang downstairs, and Nanako, distracted by the sound, teetered and lost her balance.

"Eek!" she shrieked, plummeting towards the floor. Yu's arms were out in a moment, and he'd caught her and was lowering her safely back down to the ground before Dojima had even had a chance to register what was going on.

"Yay! You're my hero, Big Bro!" announced Nanako, wrapping her arms around him and giving him an enthusiastic hug. Yu smiled.

"Nope," he said. "You're my hero. Looks like we can latch the suitcase, now. Nice job, Nanako."

While the members of his immediate family congratulated each other on a job well packed, Dojima hurried downstairs to answer the door. When he pulled it open, Yosuke Hanamura was standing outside, looking fidgety and unsettled.

"Uh, hi, Dojima-san," said Yosuke, giving Dojima his little, mostly respectful nod. "Um, is Yu home? I know he's leaving tomorrow, so…I thought I'd come and say hi. Or, goodbye. Or both, I guess."

Dojima ushered him in, closing the door again behind him. "Yeah, he's upstairs with Nanako. They're just finishing up some packing."

"Oh, right," said Yosuke. "Do you guys need help?"

From upstairs, there came the suddenly ecstatic sound of Nanako, squealing "Wheeeeee!" for reasons that Dojima couldn't quite define. He only hoped she hadn't found something else even more exciting to jump off of, and temporarily noted to himself that encouraging her to jump on suitcases may not have been have good for his overall disciplinary regime.

"Nope," muttered Dojima."I…think we've got it all under control. You want some coffee, or something? Yu'll be down as soon as he's done."

Yosuke graciously accepted a mug, and Dojima poured some of his signature black coffee into it. "Sugar?" he asked.

Yosuke shook his head. "Nah," he mumbled. "No thanks."

They sat together at the kitchen table in silence, listening to the rustlings and rumblings of the packing procedure through the upstairs floorboards.

"Hey, um, Dojima-san," began Yosuke, frowning into his coffee mug. "This may be kind of a weird time to say it, but…thanks."

Dojima raised an eyebrow at him. "Huh? Thanks for what?"

Yosuke scratched the back of his neck with one finger, looking uncomfortable. Then again, thought Dojima, that kid had always looked uncomfortable around him. For the longest time, it had been suspicious. Now, after everything, Dojima sort of understood why. "Thanks for…you know, the way you handled all of this. Most people wouldn't have been so cool about it. I mean, I know this was probably horrible, and…and Nanako got involved, and you had to see some stuff that didn't make sense, and…there were lots of things you could have done, but…you didn't. Even when it got ugly, and I know it got really, really ugly, we got the job done, and you could have stopped us. Thanks for the trust, I guess, even if it wasn't really trust. Gah, I'm not making any sense…"

"Don't mention it," grumbled Dojima, not entirely sure that he deserved any thanks. Actually, whether Yosuke knew it or not, he'd tried more than once to "stop" them, or to get in the way. He just hadn't been very good at it. It hadn't worked.

"Oh, and when your shadow came out," continued Yosuke, his eyes lighting up a little with excitement as he spoke, "and Nanako was fighting, and then you were all like 'let me at him!' and ready to jump in there, even though you didn't have a persona…that was really badass. Seriously. It was awesome." Pausing for a moment, he apparently remembered who he was talking to, and swallowed nervously. "Um, sir," he added. Dojima almost laughed.

"Maybe I owe you some thanks, too," he admitted grudgingly. "For looking after Nanako…and Yu. You know, he talks about you a lot."

"Yeah," muttered Yosuke. "I bet. I mean…he's a great leader. He can probably think of a hundred things that I did wrong when I was trying to take over his shoes. Things that I could have done different, to make things go faster, or…"

In an instinctive response to the frustration in Yosuke's voice, Dojima reached out and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder, the same gesture he often used with Yu to indicate manly solidarity. Yosuke looked surprised.

"That's not what I'm talking about," insisted Dojima. "Look, you two are supposed to be 'partners,' right?"

"Uh, yeah," mumbled Yosuke.

Dojima shrugged. "Partners look out for each other. That's what they're for. So, you got that part right, at least. That's the important part. The rest's just…extras." He released Yosuke's shoulder, and nodded. "You're doing fine, kid."

"Well…if you say so. I guess that's something." Yosuke sounded slightly stunned.

Standing up from the table, Dojima cleared away his coffee mug, and glanced at the stairwell. There weren't any more gleeful noises echoing from upstairs, and that made him a little bit uneasy. It was probably time, he decided, to go and check out what was going on with the packing.

"I'll go see what's keeping Yu," he said, and started for the stairs.

"Um, Dojima-san, sir," called Yosuke, just as Dojima was about to start up for Yu's bedroom. Dojima turned around and raised an eyebrow at him. "Can I…can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, sure," said Dojima. "What?"

Yosuke looked up and really met Dojima's eyes for the first time. The seriousness in Yosuke's face took Dojima aback for a moment. No kid, he thought, should have that kind of look on his face. Kids were supposed to be about messing around. When did Yu, Yosuke, or any of the others get to really be kids? It was a sobering thought.

"How do you do it?" asked Yosuke. "You know, how do you go upstairs and pack up stuff, and go to work, and take your daughter to school, and act like the world's a normal place? I mean…no offense, but you just learned about the existence of another world…and that your dead partner's not really dead…and that your daughter's a magical whatever, and…so? Where do you start getting back to the real stuff?"

Dojima stopped, and frowned for a minute He had to think about that one, but found that the answer came from a different part of his brain than he thought it would. It came from the detective part, the part that was used to facing horrible things that made a father wish he hadn't raised a daughter in this world, and the part that somehow moved on from them, again and again, every time.

"There's nothing, really, that you do," he said, shrugging. "It's not a thing; it's not something that happens. I see the same thing after every case…people wandering around, trying to figure out what's next. What's next is easy. What's next is that you get up and you move on. The road to recovery starts with waking up in the morning, it's…it's just like that. Sorry. Wish I had something a little more profound, but I don't. Maybe you should ask Yu, he's good at that sort of thing."

As he climbed the stairs, and opened the door to Yu's room, Dojima thought he heard Yosuke mumbling something to himself in the kitchen, juts loud enough that the words almost came through.

"No," Yosuke was saying. "No, that's…that's pretty good. Thanks."

**Fin.**

**The More Things Change**

**Fifth Story: The More Things Change**

**Summary: **Dojima is drunk again. Adachi isn't. They remember what that used to be like. One shot.

**Character Focus: **Dojima, Adachi

After putting Yu on the train and waving goodbye, Dojima went to work. He finished the paperwork, barked a few orders, and even handled a patrol on his own. Arisato hadn't been to the station since the confrontation in the Velvet Room, and although Dojima had started out thinking that it was for the best, the number of phone calls and menial tasks that he had to manage had made him realize that it might be worth giving her a call, if only for the sake of getting more stuff done. He didn't have to forgive her. He didn't even have to talk to her, as far as he could see. He really, however needed someone who could make coffee and answer phones at the same time.

There had been a time when he'd used Adachi for that sort of thing. Then, it had been Arisato. Now they were both playing hookie, and for all Dojima knew, they were probably both hanging out and messing around together in the Velvet Room.

It was probably that irritated thought that set him off down the darkened streets of the shopping district that night. Well, maybe it was that thought, as well as the impressive quantity of sake he'd started drinking almost immediately after Nanako went to bed. The drinking had started out as his own little "fuck you" to the world at large and his busy, hectic day, and had ended up seeming like more and more of a good idea the farther he got into the bottle.

He was, therefore, wobbling slightly on his feet and uncomfortably dizzy as he strode directly through the Velvet Room door, and came face to face with a slightly alarmed looking Tohru Adachi.

"Whoa," said Adachi. "Uh. Hi there."

"Where's Arisato?" demanded Dojima, unsteadily.

"Probably asleep," suggested Adachi. "In her bed. Which is in her house. See, I know that, because I-!"

"She's not with you?" asked Dojima. "I thought she'd be with you."

Adachi grimaced. "Look, I haven't seen her in a while, okay? You wanna rub that in my face, go ahead, I don't give a shit. It's my fault, anyway."

Dojima blinked. "So…she's not here?" he clarified. "Damn…" For some reason, his own words were reverberating around in his head, and they sounded strange, as though they were all blending and slurring together.

Adachi let out an exasperated sigh. "Dojima-san…it's after eleven o'clock at night, and you're obviously sloshed, so…why don't you just go home, huh? You can go another round with me in the morning, if you really feel like it. I'll be here. I'm…always here."

Dojima glowered at him. "Don't you tell me what to do," he mumbled threateningly. "I'm in charge here, remember? Besides, you're supposed to be…to be dead." Suddenly, Dojima didn't feel so well. Something in his stomach was moving around unpleasantly, and he clutched at it, screwing up his eyes as he tried to fight down a wave of nausea.

"Oh, shit…" muttered Adachi, starting to look panicked. "Come on, don't…don't puke on the floor, I have to live here, remember? Come on, please?" Turning around, he gave Igor a beseeching look. Oh, thought Dojima. Until that moment, he hadn't even noticed that Igor was in the room.

"Hey, Igor, come on, look at this sad sack of shit. He's gonna make a mess all over your nice, blue…uh, everything. I gotta take this guy home."

Igor didn't even look up at him. It was as though Adachi hadn't said anything. Dojima snorted in amusement. If only he'd ever learned how to ignore Adachi properly…

"Hey, I'm talking to you!" insisted Adachi, annoyed. "Are you listening? You gonna let me out of here, or what? It's not like he's going anywhere on his own, unless you want him passing out on the floor and sleeping it off."

Again, Igor said nothing. Only a flicker of one eye indicated to Dojima that he was even aware that Adachi had spoken.

Adachi breathed out a long, frustrated sigh. Glancing at Dojima to see if he was listening, he sucked in a breath, bit his lip, and then looked Igor square in the eye.

"Master," he drawled miserably. "May I please, for the love of god, take this piece of shit detective out of here?"

This time, Igor did look up, and nodded once.

As Adachi walked over and grabbed Dojima roughly under one arm, Dojima snorted out a laugh.

"Master?" he asked.

Adachi gave him a murderous look. "You shut the fuck up," he muttered.

As they stalked back through the Inaba streets, Adachi hauling none too gently on Dojima's arm, Adachi kept mumbling angrily under his breath.

"Why are you so drunk, anyway?" he asked. "It's embarrassing. Don't you have a kid to look after? Seriously, and it's not like I care, but I don't see you winning the 'father of the year' award any time soon."

"You," Dojima informed him, stabbing one unsteady finger a little bit too close to Adachi's face, "have got no right to lecture me on…on conduct."

For some reason, that made Adachi laugh. "Yeah, fair point," he said, shrugging. "Got me there."

"You wanna know why I'm drunk?" asked Dojima.

Adachi shook his head. "Nah, not really. Not really at all. It was…sort of a rhetorical question."

"Good," finished Dojima miserably. "Cause I'm gonna tell ya…" He had to stop for a moment, while his stomach made dangerous, threatening lurching motions. When it finally calmed down, he took a second to figure out where he'd lost track of the conversation. "Right," he said finally. "You know something? Yesterday,…uh, yeah, yesterday I told that Hanamura kid something."

"Really," sighed Adachi. "And…that's why you're drunk?"

"I told him," continued Dojima, forging on despite and through Adachi's sarcasm, "some shit about how 'the first step to recovery is just getting up in the damn morning.' That's what I told him."

"Pithy," remarked Adachi.

Dojima shook his head violently, then immediately wished he hadn't as the dizziness threatened to overwhelm and down him. "But the funny part, "he finished, "is that I don't even know what the hell that means! 'Get up in the morning…recovery…' Shit. Do I look like the kinda guy you wanna ask for advice like that? Why don't these kids…just leave me alone?" He hiccupped, then shuddered. "I feel like shit," he said, in case that wasn't clear.

They were close to something that looked almost like his house by this point, although Dojima was sure that his house was a lot less blurry and wobbly than whatever this thing was. Adachi dumped him in a heap outside of something that looked like it might be a front door, and Dojima lay there on the ground for a moment, waiting patiently for the world to stop spinning and retake some semblance of sanity again.

"What it means," said Adachi, "is that life goes on, so get over it. Okay? That's what you told the kid. Not bad advice. You just made it sound prettier."

"Oh," mumbled Dojima. "Well, good. That's….at least that makes sense."

There was a moment of silence while Dojima lay on his back on the ground, and Adachi stood beside him, frowning as the real world night air chilled them both.

"The hell happened to my life?" asked Dojima peevishly.

Adachi shook his head. "Nothing, apparently. I mean, hey, this is pretty much just like old times, right? What's that thing old people say? 'The more things change, the more they stay the same?' Yeah, I think that's the one."

Forcing himself laboriously on to his hands and knees, Dojima gave himself the extra moment to stagger to his feet. He turned to Adachi, and was relieved to find that there seemed, at least, to be only one of Adachi this time. One was more than enough. Zero would have been better. Still, at least things were moving around less in his visual field.

"Why'd you come out here?" he demanded.

"What? Seriously? Any excuse to get out of that damn room," Adachi informed him. "Don't kid yourself and think I'm doing you any favors."

"Yeah," grumbled Dojima. "Not like you ever did…"

"Uh huh," agreed Adachi. Stepping forward, he reached for the doorknob and found, upon turning it, that the door was already open. "You know what though?" he asked, as Dojima struggled to join him at the door. "You're gonna do me one. I need to use your TV."

**Fin.**

**The Moon is Beautiful: Chapter One**

**Sixth Story: The Moon is Beautiful, Isn't It?**

**Summary: **In the wake of Adachi's ultimatum, Minako tries to narrow down a concrete definition of a complicated word. Luckily for her, there's love everywhere she looks.

**Character Focus: **Minako, Yukari, Rise, Junpei, Chidori, Saki

**Chapter One**

"I think that's everything!" announced Yukari triumphantly, as she and Minako slammed down together on the trunk of her car. "Phew! Thanks, Mina-chan! Man, sometimes I forget how hard it can be when Kippei's not around. He helped me get everything packed in the first place…don't let Junpei know I said that, though. He'd never let me live it down if he heard that I'd admitted to something being 'man's work.'"

Minako smiled. "My lips are sealed," she promised. "You know, though, you could have asked Junpei to come and help out. I don't think he would have said no."

Yukari rolled her eyes. "No way," she insisted. "I'd rather grunt and sweat a little than have him see me struggling. Anyway, this is just you and me time, right? Girl time. When do we ever get any of that, anymore? Nah, Stupei can wait."

Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned back against the newly closed trunk, and gave Minako a look, searching look.

"What?" asked Minako, feeling a little uneasy under her old friend's skeptical stare.

"Are you really gonna be okay, here?" asked Yukari. "I mean…look, you don't have to do this. I know you think that it's all your fault, and so you have to handl it, but…it's not. You saved that guy's life, okay? I don't want you just sitting around feeling like a martyr while everybody dumps their guilt on you, that's not right. If you want, Minako, I can stay. Kippei'll understand, he gets that you're important to me."

For a moment, Minako almost said yes. She wanted to ask Yukari to stay, to please stay forever, because even with Junpei, she could always use another ally. She missed the girl time, and she missed having someone who really understood her on a different level, on a feminine level that she never had to explain.

In the end, though, she just shook her head. "Its okay, Yukari," she insisted. "Thank you, I mean it…and I want you to come back and visit, I want to see more of you, but you have a life to go back to, and people who love you. I can't just take up all of your time because I've screwed up and now I need someone to bail me out."

Yukari sighed. "When are you gonna start getting it, huh? You're not taking up my time…you have people who love you, too. Look, I want to see you happy. I don't think I've ever really seen that."

"Sure you have," insisted Minako. "I'm always happy, I'm-!"

"No, you're not," interrupted Yukari seriously. "I'm not talking about happy for a few minutes, like when you and I used to go watch Akihiko-senpai's boxing matches, or like when you and Fuuka would finish cooking something and for once it wouldn't burn. Not that kind of happy, not little happy. I'm talking about big happy, real happy, happy like…" She floundered for a moment, obviously frustrated, and waved her hands around in the air as though trying to make a point with her gestures that she hadn't gotten out yet in words. "You know what I mean," she managed finally, sighing in defeat.

Minako frowned. "I'm…not sure I do," she murmured. "There aren't…different kinds of happy, are there? Isn't happiness just…happiness? It's not such a complicated thing. That's part of its charm."

Yukari planted her hands on her hips. "Now you know that' snot true," she admonished. "I've heard you say it a hundred times, how you did all the stuff that you did back at Gekkoukan because you wanted us to be happy. Would you have sacrificed yourself to Nyx so that Fuuka could finish a cake, or someone could get a Christmas present they wanted?"

Minako opened her mouth to respond, but Yukari suddenly put up a hand in to stop her.

"You know what," said Yukari quickly, "don't answer that. I mean, it's you we're talking about, so as far all I know, you'd say yes. What I'm really trying to say is that I want you to have something to look forward to, you know? Something that makes you want to get up in the morning, or makes you feel better when you start to think about it. That's what Kippei wants for me, that's why I'd know he'd let me stay, because he knows I'd feel better about watching you feel better. Hey, does that make any sense? I'm just worried that staying here will end up making you miserable."

Minako took a moment to think about that. Of course what Yukari said made sense, but there was something else that she'd mentioned which hadn't sat right with Minako, something that was starting to crawl its way through her consciousness and make her uncomfortable.

"Is that what love means?" she asked finally. "Wanting someone else to be happy? Just like Kippei does for you?"

Yukari nodded enthusiastically. "Of course, you silly," she said. "And just like I do for you, okay? We love you, Minako…you do get that, right?"

Minako nodded, as though she did, and Yukari wrapped her up in a quick, friendly squeeze. Even as the feelings of gratitude and safety washed over her in Yukari's embrace, however, Minako found her mind straying to other things.

Did Tohru, she wondered, want her to be happy? Sometimes, she had a hard time telling for sure. So much of everything seemed to be about him, what he needed, and what he wanted. Maybe there was something in that, or at least in the fact that she hadn't even thought about it too much, up until he'd ordered her out and not to come back until she could give him what he needed. She'd spent so much time thinking about him and what she could do for him that she'd never noticed that maybe he didn't treat her the way she might have wished he did.

"Oh, hey!" announced Yukari brightly."Looks like we still have time to go grab something to eat before I have to leave. Do you want to do that?" Frowning suddenly, she sighed. "And if you really want, we can ask Stupei to come, too. I guess it's nice to see him, too, sometimes…"

**The Moon is Beautiful: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

The next morning, Minako was getting breakfast at the Junes food court when she saw Rise, sitting alone at the one of the tables, humming to herself as she sipped a cup of coffee.

Minako took a deep breath as she began walking over in Rise's direction. Now, she thought, would be as good or as bad a time as ever, and this conversation couldn't be avoided forever. Eventually, she'd have to face it.

"Rise," she murmured, hovering behind the chair just across from the woman she hoped was still her friend. "I'm sorry to bother you like this, but…I'd like to apologize for what happened in the Velvet Room the other day."

Rise raised an eyebrow at her. "What?" she asked, so sweetly that Minako instantly distrusted it. "You mean, about you making out with the guy that murdered our senpai?"

Minako bristled a bit, but now that she'd begun, she couldn't just walk away again. "No, actually," she murmured, as deferentially as she could manage. "Actually, I meant about what happened with Junpei. It's my fault that he treated you that way…he was distracted because I was upset. I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with the way he feels about you, and I wish I hadn't gotten in the way like that." She shrugged. "That's all."

Minako turned away again, prepared to walk off quickly and leave Rise alone with any thoughts or snide comments she might be inclined to make.

"Forget it," Rise muttered, with an almost childish peevishness in her voice. "It's…not like it wasn't going to happen anyway. Maybe it is sort of your fault, but…it's not like you did it on purpose. Maybe you're just one of those girls…"

"One of those girls?" asked Minako, turning around in some surprise. "One of…what girls? What does that mean?"

Rise rolled her eyes. "Come on," she remonstrated, "don't act like you don't know."

Minako, who seemed to be expected to know a lot of things lately that she clearly didn't, was starting to get a bit annoyed. Rise must have seen that in her face, because the teen idol's eyes suddenly widened.

"Wow, you really don't, huh?" asked Rise. "You're…you're actually kind of dense, you know that, Mina-chan? I mean…first it was Yosuke, and you acted like you just didn't have a clue about that, and now…"

"Junpei isn't interested in me, if that's what you mean," established Minako, very carefully, trying not to let herself get angry. "I know that you've always been worried about it, but really, Rise, you could have trusted me or at least trusted him when he told you-!"

"Not interested in you? Are you kidding?" Rise laughed, and it was a strange cross between a mocking laugh and a miserable, incredulous laugh at the same time. "You're the most interesting thing in his entire world. Okay, yeah, I know, maybe he's not in love with you, and maybe he's not even attracted to you, but if you think for one minute that there's room for me in between the two of you, then you're kidding yourself. It doesn't matter what I do…and at this point, I don't think it even matters what you do. He'd drop anything or anyone one for you in a second if he thought you needed him. He'd drop me. I mean…I guess he sort of did."

Minako blinked, trying to think of how to react to that. "No, listen," she insisted, "it's…it's not like that. I can see why you'd think that, and I'm sorry that I've made you feel that way, but Junpei and I are just good friends. We've been through a lot together, things that…things that it's hard to go through and get over alone. That's all it is."

"You say that like it's not a big deal," murmured Rise. She sighed, shaking her head, and her pigtails bouncing. "Minako, I'm not upset with you. Okay, maybe that's not true, maybe I'm a little angry about what you did to Yosuke, but… feelings happen. I know that. And I'm not angry about Junpei. I told you, it's not really your fault."

"But, you just said-!" interjected Minako.

Rise cut her off impatiently. "Hey, I'm not finished! Listen, you can't love everybody. I've got a big heart, and I know it, but even for me there isn't enough to reach everybody in the whole world. Maybe that's why I struggled when I first became an idol. It's stressful, trying to give everything you have to everybody who wants it. Junpei's already giving it all to you. There's not enough left for me. That's…that's just how it is."

"He doesn't love me," Minako reminded her. "You admitted that yourself."

Rise shook her head. "I said that he's not in love with you, that's not the same thing. Minako, there are lots of different kinds of love. Junpei's an all or nothing kind of guy, he's going all the way or he's going home, I guess. He loves you so much that it's hard for him to see other people. I know you're not doing it on purpose, but there it is."

Minako wanted to tell Rise to stop talking. She wanted to insist, to beg her to believe that there was nothing between her and Junpei that could possibly take the place of what Rise could be, or what Chidori had been. The more she thought about it, however, the more she remembered moments, like the way Junpei had said there wasn't anything here for him if she left, and the way he'd promised her that watching her die had been the worst moment of his life.

"How do I fix it?" she asked, feeling stupid and helpless.

Rise took a sip of her coffee. "You can't," she informed her. "Besides, why would you want to? Don't you want to be loved?"

Of course she did, thought Minako, but…at the same time, this wasn't right. "I don't want to come in between him and the rest of his life," she insisted. "I don't want to get in the way of his relationships."

"Then maybe hooking up with Adachi wasn't such a great idea," sighed Rise. "I mean, it's obvious. If he has to pick a side, then he's going to choose yours. No matter what's at stake, he's on your team. That's loyalty for you, and loyalty and love come from the same place, I guess. They're both all about being willing to give up everything you have for the sake of somebody else."

"Have you ever felt that way about someone?" asked Minako.

Unexpectedly, Rise smiled. "Mmmhmm,' she murmured. "My friends and I have been through a lot together, too, so…I guess maybe I can't blame Junpei. Maybe, in the end, he's not wrong."

**The Moon is Beautiful: Chapter Three**

**Chapter Three**

"Hey, Junpei," said Minako, as she stood browsing the armors at Daidara's store. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you."

Junpei looked up from the register, where he'd either been lost in thought, or dozing off. "Yeah? What's up?"

"Well…" For a moment, Minako wondered if she should, perhaps, have led in to this a bit more casually, but past experiences with Junpei had proven that really, it was usually best to just come right out and say it. "Have you spoken to Rise, lately?"

Junpei scowled irritably at her. "Aw, man, Mina-tan…not you, too!"

Minako blinked. "Me too? Other people have been asking you?"

"Sure," muttered Junpei . "Like, pretty much everybody. Seems like me and Rise are everybody's favorite soap opera, these days. Not like it can be that interesting to watch, I mean, we don't do much, or throw things or have big public fights, but, still…" He shook his head. "Ugh, girls. Can't live with 'em…"

"Aren't I a girl?" asked Minako.

Junpei apparently had to actually think about that for a moment. "Yeah, of course you're a girl, but you're, uh…you know, you. So it's different."

Minako wasn't entirely sure what was "different" about it, but instinct encouraged her not to ask. That might be a can of worms, she decided, that wasn't worth opening. Instead, she insisted, "So? Have you spoken to her or not?"

Junpei sighed, defeated. "Nope," he admitted. "Not…not exactly. There was that one time…"

Junpei went on to briefly and somewhat uncomfortably describe a recent encounter with Rise, during which she'd apparently attempted to hit on Kanji, and had then shouted at Junpei for not calling. Minako was forced to admit to herself that she had no idea what that was all about, although in the end it did seem to come down to the fact that Rise wasn't too happy with Junpei's conduct. Thinking back to what Rise had told her about Junpei's loyalties getting in the way of their relationship, Minako felt guilty and frustrated, and couldn't help but feel as though some of this really was, in an indirect and accidental way, mostly her damn fault.

"It's like I said," Junpei was saying, apparently oblivious to Minako's reverie. "Girls…they're crazy. I mean, one minute they're pissed at you for not calling, the next they're hitting on some guy right in front of you to try and make a point…and what the hell point is that supposed to make, anyway? See, that I don't get. It's the head games. Why's it always gotta be headgames? Chidori didn't do shit like that. She was real, you know? She was straight with me. It made sense. This…this is trouble. This girl is trouble."

Minako felt that he wasn't being entirely fair to Rise, especially considering what Minako remembered about Junpei's history with the Strega member in question. "Junpei," she reminded him, "Chidori did nothing but play head games. She tricked you into being trapped and unable to join your team members during a significant full moon battle…and that was the just the start of it. She was…she was…"

She wanted to say "she was a headcase," or "she had more mental problems that the rest of us put together," which considering what had happened over the course of that year was quite an impressive statement. In the end, though, Minako couldn't bring herself to put Chidori down. She hadn't been very fond of the girl, and although Minako was well aware that she really did owe Junpei's life to Chidori, Chidori's shifting allegiances and standoffish manner had never touched her as the sort of thing she really wanted for her closest friend.

"Chidori didn't want anything from me," Junpei went on, apparently taking a trip down the darker alleys of memory lane. "You know, she was just…there, I guess. Nah, that's not what I mean, but she and I, we could just be and that was it. She didn't need nothing. She just didn't want to be alone. It was easy, it made sense, it was…comfortable. Made me feel good, inside, without having to worry so much about the other shit like flowers and phone calls, and…needing. One of the things I liked about her, she always made me want to give, never had to ask for it. Rise….she's just a bundle of complaints, half the time." He grumbled something to himself, bit his lip, and glared accusingly at a sword that was hanging just across from him on the wall near the door.

"She cares about you," insisted Minako, unwilling to give this one up, even in the face of Junpei's obvious resentment. Maybe, she thought, maybe if she could just bring him around, she'd be able to set this whole thing right again, this whole thing she'd had apparently been the cause of damaging in the first place.

Junpei shook his head. "She sure cares about something," he said, "but I dunno what it is. See, caring's supposed to be easy, something that happens when it's quiet, I guess. It's not all of this noise and crap. You care about somebody by caring about them, not by telling everybody else how much they don't care about you." He sighed. "But, then again, that's probably a girl thing, and I will never, not ever understand the girl stuff. Not gonna try, don't wanna know. Girls are just…ugh. You know what I'm saying?"

"I'm still a girl," Minako reminded him.

Junpei glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Kay," he said, "then you tell me what it's all about. What am I supposed to do to make her stop freaking out? Is there a thing, like, that I can do to make this all go away?"

"Try calling her," suggested Minako.

"You're a like goddamn broken record," muttered Junpei. "Hey, here's a thought…how come she can't call me, huh? Where's the rule that says a girl can't call a guy first?"

That almost made Minako smile. "Aren't you the one who always says that this kind of thing is a man's job? That he's the one who needs to take the initiative?"

Junpei bit his lip. "Got me there," he mumbled. "Fine, I'll call. But don't you leave…you stay right there in case I need backup."

Minako, dutifully, did not move.

**The Moon is Beautiful: Chapter Four**

**Chapter Four**

One morning, Minako woke up fully intending to go to the police station. It had been days since she'd stopped reporting in for work, and the lack of angry phone calls from Dojima was only making her feel worse and worse about playing hookie. Today, she decided, would be the day. She'd walk right back in, sit down at her desk, and then…

That was, of course, where the plan fell apart. What was she supposed to do after that? Would she apologize for just not coming in for almost a week? How would she apologize for the rest of what had happened, for lying to Dojima and for Adachi's sudden reappearance? Was there, actually, anything worth saying on the subject? Somehow, no apology she could make seemed quite sufficient for the circumstances.

It was with those unpleasant thoughts in her head that Minako found herself lingering, yet again, around the Junes food court, loathe to get on the bus and take the long, nerve-wracking ride to the station where she would have no idea what exactly was waiting for her, or if they'd even kept her position open for her after so many missed mornings. She shuddered involuntarily at the idea of what Dojima would be like, with no one to make sure that he had a constant supply of coffee to fend off his general distaste for the concept of mornings in general.

As she idly and somewhat pathetically stood in the food court and watched the people passing by, Minako wondered what it had been that had forced her out of bed that morning with the resolve that today, she was going to change things. That of course, had been ridiculous. What was so different about today? Nothing. It was the same mess she'd been in for days, and the deeper she found herself mired in the mess, the more of a struggle it became to even want to get out of bed, especially with no end or solution in even the farthest and most optimistic of sights.

Perversely, something that Yosuke had once said to her chose that moment to wend its way back through her mind. They'd been sitting right here, in the food court, watching the people, and Yosuke had gotten this sort of wistful, faraway look in his eyes, thinking about someone who had been gone for a long time. "I don't know why I'm still here," he'd mused. "Maybe it's because I used to look forward to it so much when she was around. The feeling kinda sticks with you, you know?"

She didn't know why she'd thought about Yosuke, the one person she was trying the hardest not to think about. There was a little stab of internal guilt, shame, and anger at the same time as she remembered the way he'd looked at her and the horrible things he'd said in the Velvet Room. He'd meant those things, she knew, even if the others tried to insist that he'd spoken in haste and temper. He'd been missing Saki then, too, and that was what had made him so furious. Saki was the same girl that had made him want to get up in the morning, and even though she was gone forever there was something about her memory that was so precious to him he couldn't let it be tampered or tarnished, not by anyone. Adachi's very existence tarnished it. His relationship with Minako…did something sickeningly, horribly worse, that maybe there was no word for.

"But it wasn't love," mumbled Minako to herself, almost defiantly. "She didn't love him. She despised him. That's worse than not loving someone."

Minako had been witness to an argument once between Rise and Yukiko, during which Yukiko had insisted that love meant something mutual, and that no one could really be in love with someone who didn't love them in return. Rise had begged to differ, rather hotly. She'd said that unrequited love was one of the most beautiful forms of love, and something about their being lots of really great songs about it. The argument, which had been groundless to begin with had drifted off into the place where all idle and insignificant chatter goes after too many minutes in the sun, but it had left Minako with a strange and uncertain taste in her mouth.

Saki had never loved Yosuke, but there was little question that she'd meant the world to him, even after he'd known the truth. That had to be love, if anything was.

Minako knew, of course, that she'd been very popular in high school. She tried not to think too hard about it, because it was a little embarrassing and somewhat nonsensical, especially the way Junpei always described it.

He'd say things to anyone who'd listen, like "Mina-tan's every guy's dream girl. Even the ones she never dated, they'd follow her around with those big, stupid puppy-dog eyes…I kinda felt bad for 'em, hah." Then he'd grin at everyone as though what he'd just said was funny, but over the years it had managed to make Minako sad.

It wasn't just that he apparently thought of her as some kind of floozy, which she sincerely hoped she wasn't, and yet suspected she might actually be. It was the also the idea that she'd managed to make all the people in Junpei's extravagant stories feel something that she hadn't been able to feel in return. Looking at what had become of Yosuke after Saki, Minako could only imagine the way a love that went totally unnoticed must feel inside a person trying to get through his or her day. Of course, there was also Ken, whom Minako had initially dismissed as a sweet little kid with a childish crush, but who apparently managed to harbor that crush even today. That must, she knew, mean something.

It meant something like love, something that she'd thought she'd understood until she'd seen the longing, listless look in Yosuke's eyes when he talked about the girl who never cared for him, or when she'd seen the set, grim lines of Tohru's mouth as he'd told her that he needed her to tell him that she was in love with him, and that nothing else would be enough.

That of course, begged another question, a question that she knew she needed an answer to.

Was she?

**Fin.**

**For a Friend**

**Seventh Story: For a Friend**

**Summary: **Nanako confronts Adachi in the Velvet Room to impart a pearl of wisdom that Adachi isn't keen on hearing. One shot. Inspired by conversations with **der kapitan.**

**Character Focus: **Adachi, Dojima, Nanako

As usual, Adachi was bored. Sitting in the Velvet Room, doing absolutely nothing and with no far-reaching goals even to dream about, he was always bored, but today, it was worse than usual. He was so bored and listless that it had opened up all of the restless space in his unoccupied mind, and all he could think about was her.

At first, after he'd told her not to come back until she could give him what he wanted, he'd felt empowered. For months, he'd been watching himself losing control, feeling the way that every sight of her or contact with her turned him into sickeningly malleable jelly that wanted nothing more than to be loved. There had been a real rush when he'd turned the tables on her…but there had been pain, too, unexpectedly real, unpalatable pain that had made him want to take it back and grab her quick before she had a chance to walk out of the Velvet Room and out of the life that she'd almost forced him to start living.

Slowly, as the days went by, it had gotten worse. He'd been sure, at the start, that he'd done the right thing, that he'd made the decision that was best for him. Maybe it wasn't a hero's decision, maybe it had shocked the hell out of her, but in the end, it would make her realize how much she needed him, and not just the other way around.

It was only after the first week had gone by that Adachi had begun to realize, with that sinking, self-loathing in the pit of his stomach that maybe she wasn't coming back. Maybe he'd demanded something from her that she didn't have to give, and that he couldn't live without. Now, that was all he could think about, and every wasted second of every miserable, monotonous piece-of-shit day was just more evidence of the fact that probably, if he'd just stayed quiet and decided to take what he could get, he could have been with her. In a moment where she'd had a decision to make, he'd let her go, and maybe she'd taken it and walked out forever. He had to admit to himself that if she had, she'd been smart. There sure as hell wasn't any future in sticking around with him, and they both knew it.

The clock on the wall made miserable, taunting tick-tock noises as Adachi tried not to stare at it. Actually, he wasn't sure what a clock was doing there in the first place, or when it appeared. No one had installed it. One day, he'd just looked up and it had been there. Igor had said that the Velvet Room was just a manifestation of what was going on inside some poor sucker's head. Maybe that clock came from his head. He was the sucker. It was counting down the seconds that he was trying not to think about.

"Adachi-san!" called a gratingly cheerful little voice. He looked up and blinked at Nanako, who was wandering in through the street entrance, looking chipper and upbeat, and generally all of the things that Adachi wasn't and hated at this moment. "Hi!'

"Hey," muttered Adachi, taking out the persona compendium and slumping into his chair with a long-suffering look on his face. "What do you want today?"

Nanako frowned at him. "That's not very nice," she admonished him. "You should try to be nicer...it would make people like you more."

The statement was so blatantly ridiculous that Adachi snorted on a laugh. "Yeah, that's…that's probably not gonna happen," he informed her. "Come on, what's it gonna be? Let's go, I don't have all day."

He did, of course, have all day. In fact, as far as he knew, he had the rest of eternity, but Nanako was pissing him off. She was too happy. What the fuck was there to be so happy about?

"Um…nothing," said Nanako.

Adachi raised an eyebrow at her. "Nothing? Seriously? What'd you come in here for?"

Suddenly, Nanako frowned, and looked down at her shiny new Christmas shoes. Black, noted Adachi, with the detached, detective part of his brain. They had little flowers on them. He'd only seen her wear them once before.

"Actually…" mumbled Nanako, shuffling her feet uncomfortably. "Um, have you seen Dad? I can't find him anywhere…he's not at the station, and he's not at the house, and…uh…"

Oh, thought Adachi. Figures. Dojima was pretty damn lucky, he decided, to have a kid who actually cared enough to go chasing around after him. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around? Not that Adachi would know much about that, but all those TV shows with the big happy families on them always painted it like the kid was supposed to be running off, and the parents were supposed to be scolding the kid. It made sense, sort of.

Adachi shrugged. "Sorry, can't help you," he said. "I've seen him a few times, though. Came in yesterday, drunk off his ass."

Nanako wrinkled her nose in annoyingly adorable distaste. "I know," she muttered. "Yuck."

Adachi shut the compendium, and was just preparing to zone out moodily at the wall and dream unhappily of Minako for a few more hours when Nanako spoke up again, interrupting him.

"I'm worried about Dad," she said.

Adachi nodded. "No kidding," he agreed. "I mean, hell, the guy's a mess, who could blame you?"

He had hoped that would be the end of the conversation, but apparently Nanako wasn't finished with him. She walked forward a few steps, planted her hands on her hips, gave an amusing rendition of her own father's exasperated stare, and then pointed an accusing finger right at Adachi's chest.

"You don't care," she told him.

"You're damn right," he agreed.

Nanako plopped herself down on the floor in front of him, and then crossed her legs, looking up at him with large, beseeching eyes. "I think he's lonely," she confided. "Even adults get lonely sometimes."

The statement was so appropriate to Adachi's own situation at the moment that it took him temporarily aback, and it was a long moment before he had anything to say. "So?" he mumbled eventually. "Guy's lonely, so he gets drunk and comes looking for the fuck-up ex-con who ruined his life? That make any sense to you?"

Nanako shook her head. "He's not looking for an ex-con, silly," she said matter-of-factly. "I think he's looking for his old partner. That's what I would do, if I was lonely. I'd look for a friend."

This time, Adachi really didn't have anything to say, and he didn't try. Instead, he played idly with two fingers on the arm of the chair, running them back and forth nervously over the upholstery as he tried to shut out Nanako's insistent gaze.

Eventually, she gave up, stood up again, and walked back towards the door.

"I guess he didn't find one," she said. "That's too bad." Then she pushed open the door and walked back out into the street. Adachi didn't watch her go. He just kept watching the fascinatingly repetitive motion of his fingers going back and forth, back and forth over the chair arm. There was bile rising in his throat and there were uncomfortable, anxious sensations spreading across his shoulders and through his knees, like there was some uncanny, distantly familiar feeling trying to force its way through to him.

"Goddamnit," he said to no one in particular. "I hate kids."

**Fin.**

**Distracted Detective: Chapter One**

**Eighth Story: The Case of the Distracted Detective**

**Summary: **Naoto has been acting strangely, not at all like her usual self. Yosuke is too busy with his own feelings to realize what's going on, and so it's up to Chie and Yukiko to help him solve the mystery.

**Character Focus: **Yosuke, Naoto, Chie, Yukiko

**Chapter One**

The day after Yu took the train home to his parents' place, Chie went over early to pick up Yukiko from the Amagi Inn.

"So…how do you think he's gonna explain the whole thing to his parents?" asked Chie conversationally, as the two girls made their way over, as usual, to Junes. "I mean, you know, how he can suddenly walk again, and all that?"

Yukiko shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "I suppose that conversation will be easier than the one in which he had to explain how he'd come back from the dead."

That sent a little shiver down Chie's spine. "Hey," she complained, "do we have to talk about that? I…really don't want to talk about that."

"Sorry," mumbled Yukiko. "You brought it up."

It was at that moment that Chie caught sight of Naoto, sitting at one of the food court tables and staring blankly off into space. That was unusual. It was definitely weird, because Naoto, as far as Chie could remember, was not the sort of person who stared off into anything. There was always something going on in that girl's brain, and you could usually tell that the gears were turning just by looking at her face. Speaking as someone who got distracted by shiny, sharp objects, or anything that smelled good on a regular basis, Chie knew what daydreaming looked like, and Naoto Shirogane was definitely daydreaming.

"Hey, Naoto!" called Chie, giving her a friendly little wave. "What's up? You look, uh…different. You okay?"

Naoto blinked, opened her mouth, closed it, and then abruptly stood up from her seat.

"Oh," she murmured distractedly. "I…forgive me, Chie-senpai, Yukiko-senpai…I…must be going."

Chie was about to protest, but there wasn't time. Before either she or Yukiko had been able to get a word in edgewise, Naoto was off across the food court, through the gate, and gone.

"What the heck was that all about?" demanded Chie, genuinely startled. "Wow, I feel kinda snubbed…that was so sudden."

Yukiko sighed wistfully, smiling just a little bit, and just enough to get Chie's full attention. "Don't you know?" asked Yukiko. "Kanji's been griping and moaning about it all week…I guess we should have known that it was bound to happen eventually, but it does seem sort of sad that he had to find out like this. After all, he's really smitten with her…and I think that's sweet."

Chie, quite frankly, thought that the way Kanji constantly stared at Naoto was actually kind of creepy, but that was exactly the sort of "romantic" stuff that Yukiko would think of as "sweet." Anyway, she reminded herself, that wasn't the point, here. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "I don't know anything. What about Kanji and Naoto? Did something happen?"

Yukiko narrowed her eyes and leaned in confidentially. "Well," she began, "it all started after Yosuke got angry at Minako in the Velvet Room. Apparently, Naoto hasn't left his side ever since. They've been really close…like, almost inseparable." She paused significantly, as though that was all there was to the story.

Chie raised an eyebrow. "And…so what?" she asked. "I mean, I know that Naoto's been trying to cheer him up, and all, about this whole Minako and Adachi thing. Honestly, I don't know how she manages it. Yosuke's a great guy, but he's pretty hard to be around, right now…I mean, he snaps at you every time you open your mouth!"

"I think," murmured Yukiko, "that's probably why Naoto's been sighing, and looking funny, and acting so weird lately."

Chie blinked. "Because, uh, Yosuke's a pain the ass?" she ventured.

Yukiko sighed. It was one of her rare, exasperated sighs, a sigh she usually saved up for Kanji at his most clueless, or for Teddie at his most insufferable. "She likes him, Chie. She likes him a lot, and she's having a hard time getting him to pay any attention or even to be nice to her after everything that's happened lately. You said it yourself, it's probably really frustrating. No wonder she's so…well, not Naoto."

"O-oh!" Chie was honestly astonished. "Wait, Yosuke and Naoto? Okay…nope, never saw that one coming. I, um, sort of thought he liked girls that were a little bit, uh…girlier."

Yukiko frowned. "I think you're right," she said. "He usually does."

"Yikes," mumbled Chie. "That sounds pretty messy…I'm pretty sure the last girl he even liked was Minako, and, uh…that's gotta be a sore spot right now, so…"

She had more to say, but before she had a chance, Yosuke pushed open the gate and came walking across the food court towards them.

"Oh, Yosuke!" cried Yukiko, looking flustered at having been caught talking about him.

"Hey," muttered Yosuke. He didn't seem to have noticed that he was the subject of their conversation. In fact, he didn't seem to be paying much attention at all, and nodded curtly at both of them before walking straight past them and into the electronics department.

"Jeez," grumbled Chie, "it's like we're chopped liver, today…what's with everybody being so rude?"

"Love," mused Yukiko philosophically, "can be really hard sometimes…"

Chie had to think about that for a minute. As far as she knew, she'd never been in love, and the more she saw of what it turned people into, the happier that made her. Sure, there had been guys in middle school…and once, she'd even thought that maybe she had a thing for Yu, but that had been a long time ago, and besides, after what had happened with Yukiko and Rise, she'd been glad that she stayed out of it. Nope, Chie was pretty much never going to be in the mood for love, she decided, especially when it seemed to turn her friends into such dopes, and pretty often, too.

"That's no good," she announced. "I mean, Yosuke's all mopey, and Naoto's all miserable, and pretty soon Kanji's gonna be a mess, too.

"Oh," Yukiko informed her, "don't worry, he already is."

"Right," sighed Chie. "So…that's what this is, just a big, awful mess.

Yukiko just shook her head. "Well, of course, but…that's the way it is. It's not like there's anything that can be done about it. They'll have to sort it out…or maybe, if Naoto just tells him show she feels, then they'll both feel a little bit better. He'll know that there's someone out there who loves him, and then maybe he'll forget about Minako, at least for a little while. Naoto won't have so much to worry or brood about, either, once it's off her chest. I mean, that has to count for something. Still, I worry that maybe Yosuke won't be able to…"

Right, thought Chie, clenching one fist in determination. Turning on her heel, she stalked over to the door to the electronics department, and swung it open.

"Hey, Chie!" asked Yukiko, hurrying along behind her. "Wait, what are you-?"

"Yosuke!" called Chie. "Come here, I want to talk to you!"

**Distracted Detective: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

"Huh?" Yosuke turned around at the sound of Chie's voice, just in time to see her bearing down on him with determination and grit stamped her eyes, as she waded through a sea of confused looking teenage customers who parted before her and began whispering amongst themselves.

"Uh, hey, Chie!" Yosuke wasn't sure exactly what it was about that look, but he'd seen it several times before, and it never boded well. The fact that Yukiko was hurrying in to the store behind her, looking worried and confused only made the situation seem worse from the get-go. "Listen, I'm kinda working right now…can we talk later?"

Chie shook her head. "No," she insisted, "it's important. Tell me, what kind of girls do you like?"

Immediately the room went silent. Yosuke could feel the hairs beginning to stand up on the back of his neck as time seemed to slow down, and every pair of eyes in the room suddenly fastened in fascinated horror on his dumbstruck face. In the same instant, he began frantically trying to think up an exit strategy while his mouth worked open and closed as he figured out something ,anything to say.

"Wha…wha…wha-?" He managed, every several seconds thought. "Wait, Chie, where the hell did that come from?"

"Ooh, Chie-chan!" remarked Teddie delightedly, coming up behind them from…somewhere. "You're so bold! Oh, wait, do you have a crush on Yosuke? Really? I didn't think he'd be your type…what about me?"

"Teddie!" shouted Yosuke, his face turning purple in a combination of embarrassment and rage.

Yukiko gave her forehead an exasperated and very audible smack with the palm of one hand.

"Wait, m-me?" stammered Chie. "No way! What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with me! No, I just wanted to ask Yosuke about-!"

"Um….Chie?" Yukiko was biting her lip. "Maybe we should do this outside the store…everyone's staring."

She was right, thought Yosuke. Activity in the store did seem to have come to a complete standstill. Even the other employees had stopped what they were doing and were gazing at Yosuke and the others as though it was the most interesting respite from work they'd received all day. Probably, thought Yosuke, it was. It was already shaping up like some kind of terribly overhyped romantic comedy.

"Come on," he muttered, grabbing Chie by the wrist, and dragging her towards the door. Yukiko and Teddie followed silently.

"So? What's with the weird questions all of a sudden?" insisted Yosuke when he'd finally gotten the girls far enough away from the building and his nosy co-workers.

Yukiko and Chie exchanged one of their knowing, significant looks.

"I just want to know," repeated Chie, "what kind of girls you like, that's all. Because, you know, if there was a girl that liked you, I'd want to know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. So? Tell me."

Yosuke frowned. It was a terrifying thought, but…what if Teddie was right? What if this was about to become the strange, twisted, Chie Satonaka version of a love confession? That would be…possibly the worst thing that had happened to him all day. Not that Chie wasn't cute, or anything, but…somehow, she really, really wasn't his idea of a good date. She was a great friend, sure, and a fantastic ally in a fight. There was probably no one, besides Yu, of course, that Yosuke would rather have along with him in a tight spot, when it came down to it. Still…love? Nope, that was definitely not happening, and if that was what she was looking for…well, then, crap. Yosuke could feel the beads of sweat collecting on the back of his neck.

"What are you making that face for?" demanded Chie. "Come on, it's not that hard a question, spit it out!"

Yosuke looked at Yukiko for support. Yukiko just shrugged, and shook her head. For some reason, that was a little bit comforting. Taking a deep breath, Yosuke scratched nervously at his neck as he tried to think of a good answer.

"Girls, um…well, uh, I like girls," he started, pretty lamely.

"You sure do!" chirped Teddie. "And you've got all those great magazines under the futon to prove it!"

Yosuke just scowled at him. "Um, and I like cute girls," he went on, unwilling, suddenly, to meet either Chie or Yukiko's gaze. "Uh, girls who aren't too shy, I guess, because shy girls are hard to talk to…oh, and girls who are confident, because confidence is cute too, right?"

"Yeah, it sure is!' agreed Chie brightly. She seemed happy with the answer. Yosuke started worrying that maybe he was doing this wrong. After all, confident and extroverted kinda described Chie, didn't it? He started backtracking desperately.

"Ooh, but she has to be uh…really smart," he added hastily. "Yeah, smart girls are the best. They're always, uh…"

He didn't really have anything to finish off with, but Yosuke figured that'd be enough. Honestly, smart girls kind of scared Yosuke. Yukiko and that Mitsuru were really smart, and also gorgeous, and that combination was always a killer. Hot, but way too intense. Not that it mattered what Yosuke really thought…as long as he could figure out what he needed to say. After all, Chie was a lot of things, but she'd probably never consider herself to be the smart type. She was more of a feeler than a thinker, and even though Yosuke and the others were actually pretty impressed with some of her tactical stuff in battle, Chie herself was always putting her intellectual skills down, probably because of her repeatedly awful scores on the midterm and final exams. He was sure that saying he liked smart girls would be the way to get her off of his back, but for some reason, her face didn't change. If anything, she looked even more pleased. Now, Yosuke was puzzled. What was up with that?

"See?" said Chie, grinning at Yukiko. "I guess we were wrong about him. He's more sophisticated than we thought."

"I am?" asked Yosuke. "Uh…thanks?"

"So," continued Chie, "she's perfect for him. She's confident, and not too shy, and definitely smart…oh boy, is she smart…"

Yosuke blinked. Okay, he decided, this definitely was not about Chie. "Who is?"

"Naoto, of course," announced Chie.

"Chie!'" Yukiko was horrified. "How…how can you just say it, like that? It's not even really our secret to tell!"

"Naoto?" Yosuke just stared. "What…are you saying that you think Naoto and I should, uh…" Suddenly, he felt himself starting to laugh. It was a strange, unfamiliar feeling, and something that he couldn't remember doing in the last three or four days, at least. Ever since seeing the messed up picture of Minako and Adachi entwined in the Velvet Room, things just hadn't been funny, and it had been all that Yosuke could do to try and keep focused on the task at hand. The idea of him and Naoto, though…honestly, Yosuke wasn't even sure that Naoto had those kinds of feminine feelings. He could just picture her going out on a date, sitting across the table and psychoanalyzing the waiters, or picking each ingredient out of the food based on her detective's deductive palette. It was a pretty miserable, if hilarious image.

"That's crazy," he told them. "No, that's…the craziest thing I've ever heard. Besides, Kanji would kill me." He smiled, then, and reached out to give Chie a companionable clap on the shoulder. "Man, though…I guess I owe you one. Your crazy ideas always do seem to cheer me up, Chie. Thanks, I guess…even if, uh, you did scare the crap out of me at the beginning."

Now it was Chie's turn to look confused. "No, hey…Yosuke, I'm not messing around. Haven't you noticed? I mean, everyone's been talking about it."

"Chie…" began Yukiko warningly. It was, however, too late.

"She's totally got a crush on you!" finished Chie. "Jeez, you guys are always so clueless…and okay, I have to admit that I don't really see the appeal, but anyway, that's not the point. The point is, what do you think?"

Yosuke didn't think anything. The smile dropped off her face, and his mind went all blurry.

"Hey, Yosuke?" Chie sounded worried. "Come on…are you even listening to me?"

**Distracted Detective: Chapter Three**

**Chapter Three**

From the blankness that Yosuke's mind had blacked out to become, one treacherous thought finally surfaced.

Naoto Shirogane was a girl.

Yosuke tried to wrap his head around that, and met with a total lack of success. Sure, he knew that she was a girl. It wasn't like she tried to hide it from anyone anymore. She even looked like a girl sometimes, or at least, the other girls said that she sometimes looked like a girl. Rise was always going on about that one time at the doctor's office, when they'd compared their measurements, and Naoto had come out on top. Yosuke, frankly, found it hard to believe. The way she dressed, it was hard to tell if there was anything under there at all, and the fact that she'd point-blank refused to enter the Miss Yasogami High swimsuit competition sort of spoke for itself. Then again, if what he'd heard about that one trip to the hot springs was true, then…

"Yosuke?" asked Yukiko, sounding worried. "Your face is turning red…are you feeling all right? Look, Chie, I think maybe you're overdoing it…"

Naoto, thought Yosuke, was a girl. Kanji knew she was a girl. Kanji was freaking thrilled that she was a girl, since if she was still a boy, then that would mean that he…but he didn't, right? And Yosuke, of course, didn't' like boys. That is, he liked them, they were easier to talk to, but he didn't…like them like that, no. And since Naoto was always dressed up like a boy, and pretending to be a boy, then it would be totally weird if Yosuke liked her, because...well, because if she looked like a boy, and Yosuke was into someone who looked like a boy, then that would mean that…

"Hey, Yosuke, come on!" Chie was getting annoyed, now. "Hello? Earth to Yosuke?"

"Oh god, what are we going to tell Naoto?" muttered Yukiko. "If she finds out about this, then I refuse to have any part in it."

"What?" demanded Chie. "But you're the one who told me the secret in the first place!"

"That's…that's a totally different thing!" insisted Yukiko indignantly. "You're not the..the object of her affections."

"The object of…who says stuff like that?" Chie shook her head. "And you know I just say stuff sometimes, so you should have known better! Anyway, there's no way she's going to find out. Who would tell her? Yosuke sure won't. Look, he's so panicked he can barely even breathe right. Now he's going from red to purple."

Naoto, thought Yosuke, was definitely a girl. There was a great deal of evidence, hearsay and otherwise, to prove that she was a girl.

"Chie," he said, biting his lip hard as he tried to figure out what his next move should be. "How do you-?"

"Good afternoon, senpai," murmured Naoto, stepping out of the electronics department and crossing over towards them. "The manager said that I was likely to find you here. You seem to have caused something of a stir. I confess to some concern. Are you all right?"

Yosuke's mouth went dry. As he, Chie, and Yukiko all stared, stock still into Naoto's approaching face, Yosuke couldn't help but notice the look in those questioning eyes of hers. She had…she really had very nice eyes, he realized. They were weird, sort of grey-blue, and kinda sharp, like she was always looking right through you. They startled him, and caught his attention. How come, he wondered, he'd never noticed how striking her eyes were before?

"Naoto-kun," murmured Yukiko miserably.

Naoto glanced briefly back and forth between Yosuke and the two girls. As she read the guilty looks on their faces, and then saw the surprise on Yosuke's, she obviously must have put two and two together in that very deductive, Naoto-esque way of hers, because her face suddenly went pale, and her eyes widened slightly.

"Ah," she murmured.

"Hey-!" began Yosuke.

He was too late. Naoto, assessing the situation for what it was worth, suddenly turned on her heel and took off back in the direction of Junes. Yosuke blinked in surprise. He didn't very often see Naoto Shirogane retreating from anything. Sure, there had been a time or two in battle, but usually that was a planned withdrawal, cool, collected, and strategic. This was definitely more of a "running for her life" sort of thing.

"Oh no…" moaned Yukiko. "What are we going to do, now?"

Chie didn't have to ask. Reaching out with both arms, she took Yosuke by the shoulders and shoved him in the direction that Naoto had gone. "We're not going to do anything," she said, nodding determinedly. "You are, Yosuke. Go on."

Yosuke stared at her. "W-what the hell am I supposed to do?"

Chie shrugged. "How should I know? You're the one she has the crush on, so this is your problem!"

That, thought Yosuke, made absolutely no sense at all. He stood still for a moment, allowing himself a second of self righteous indignation at Chie's insinuation that he'd somehow caused this fiasco for himself.

"Well?"" demanded Chie impatiently. "She's probably waiting."

"If she isn't," added Yukiko, suddenly jumping teams, apparently, "then it's probably your loss."

Yosuke gave in. He went back to Junes.

As he opened the door to the electronics department, Yosuke half expected and half hoped not to find Naoto there. Unfortunately, she was huddled up in a corner, avoiding the eyes of the passers by as she played uncomfortably with the rim of her trademark hat. When he came in, though, she looked up, and seemed to try to shrink even farther back against the wall that she'd taken as refuge.

"Yosuke-senpai," she murmured.

"Uh, yeah," agreed Yosuke, wishing he'd planned or prepared something to say. "Seriously? You came back here? Was there…a plan behind this, or something? I mean, if you're running way from someone, aren't you supposed to stay away from tight corners?"

Naoto hung her head. "Regrettably," she muttered, "in a moment of confusion, I made a strategically inappropriate choice. In a word, I panicked."

That makes two of us, thought Yosuke. "Do you want to, um, go for a cup of coffee, or something?" he asked.

Naoto's eyes went even wider. "Are you…are you asking me…?" she managed.

Yosuke shook his head. "N-not exactly," he insisted hurriedly. "But, um, there are lots of people here, and they like to stare, so…"

Naoto nodded quickly. "A very reasonably point," she agreed. "Let us…let us get out of here. Quickly."

Nobody seemed to object as Yosuke left the store. Not, of course, that he had any intention of asking his manager for permission. Yosuke's work ethic was really very good, or so he prided himself, but the important thing, right now, was to get as far away from here as possible with Naoto before Teddie had another chance to pop up, figure things out, and follow them. Sure, he was on shift at the moment, but that had never stopped his nosiness before.

They left the store together in silence, and walked along side by side down and across the street towards the shopping district. Yosuke spent most of their silent stride racking his brains to try to think of what sort of place he was supposed to bring a girl at a time like this. Would Naoto even like the sort of places that a guy and a girl would go together? He wasn't even sure she enjoyed the whole dinner and a movie thing.

Then again, he reminded himself, it didn't really matter. This wasn't a date, it was just a misunderstanding that he was about to clear up.

"Senpai," murmured Naoto. She reached out and rested a hand on his arm, and for some reason Yosuke felt an electric shock go straight through his skin as at the instant of contact.

"Wh-what is it?" he stammered.

Naoto frowned at him. "You almost walked directly into the path of an oncoming car," she informed him. "Please, have more care."

Yosuke swallowed hard. Right, he thought. Sure, of course. Even at a time like this, Naoto had even sense to have his back.

She really did, he decided, have very nice eyes. Not bad hands, either.

**Distracted Detective: Chapter Four**

**Chapter Four**

"I am…truly sorry for all the trouble that I must be causing you, senpai," mumbled Naoto, after she and Yosuke had sat down across from each other at a table at Souzai Daigaku. "This is an unfortunate and highly complicated misunderstanding."

Yosuke relaxed a bit. "Oh," he said. "Right. So, Chie's crazy, huh? You don't…I mean, you would never have a…have feelings for me, I mean. Sure. I can totally picture her getting the wrong idea about everything, wouldn't be the first time." He forced a laugh, but Naoto didn't look happy. Instead, she just looked even more uncomfortable.

She shook her head, and for just a brief moment, Yosuke wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed by her denial. Sure, this whole situation was nuts, but…it wasn't every day that someone could say that a girl like Naoto had a crush on him. After all, she was pretty popular…not exactly unattractive, and…well, a guy could do worse, that was all. Not him, of course. He wasn't even thinking about that stuff, but the point was that it would still have been pretty impressive and definitely flattering, if it were true.

"I fear you mistake my meaning," intoned Naoto with almost ludicrously steady calm. "If I am correct in what I believe that Chie-senpai has said to you, then no, she's far from wrong. In fact, she is entirely accurate. It is unfortunately true that I have been entertaining…feelings for you, if that is how you would care to put it."

Yosuke blinked. "But, hey, didn't you just say that-!"

"The misunderstanding," continued Naoto inexorably, "was in your apparent presumptions in regards to my expectations."

"Expectations?" squeaked Yosuke. "Wait, what expectations?"

Naoto was, at this point, apparently ignoring him. In fact, she wasn't even looking at him, but instead at some point just past his left shoulder, as though eye contact might have been a bit more than she was wiling to risk. Carefully, as though reading from a mental script, she said "I have no desire for the nature of our relationship to change in any way, if that is your concern. I must be perfectly clear on that point."

Yosuke thought about that for a moment. "So," he muttered, "you don't want to try, like, dating or anything?"

Naoto's eyes widened, and she cleared her throat, turning slightly pink around the ears. "D-dating?" she stammered. "N-no, of course not, why…?"

"I dunno," shrugged Yosuke. "Isn't that what normally happens when you like somebody?" This conversation, he decided, was getting stranger and stranger by the second. She was just so damn calm about the whole thing. It was weird. She was the one on the spot, but somehow he was the one getting embarrassed. What was up with that?

"I would know nothing about that," murmured Naoto. "I am somewhat out of my depth, here. These feelings are new for me, and so far untested. As I understand from observation, the process of 'dating' is something that only occurs when there is a mutual attraction between two people."

Well, thought Yosuke, that was definitely true. She had him there.

There was an awkward, tense moment between them, during which Yosuke's brain continued to spin and Naoto carefully scrutinized the corner of the table.

"Well," she sighed eventually, "I believe that covers everything, unless you have any questions for me."

Yosuke found himself seriously considering asking Naoto if she were not, in fact, a robot. Any questions? Seriously? Was this a love confession or a boring second period class lecture? It felt more like the one than the other by the moment, and it was really throwing him off his game. Somehow, he felt like there should be crying here, somewhere, although he couldn't be sure if he or Naoto should be doing the crying. Hopefully her. Then again, it wasn't like she was much of the crying type.

"Nope," he managed. "I, uh…I think I get it. Thanks."

"Yes," agreed Naoto. "Then, if you'll excuse me."

She stood up, and Yosuke instinctively stood up with her. As she turned back to glance at him, he was aware of something that looked too much like hurt in her usually calculating, competent eyes.

"No, please," she insisted, shaking her head. "There is no need at all for you to accompany me. I insist that you feel free to finish your lunch."

She left, and as Yosuke watched her walk away, he was sure that there was something he was supposed to be saying right now. It was always hard to get a word in edgewise with Naoto, but even if he had found the right moment, it wasn't like he had the right words. He didn't even know where he'd missed his cue.

Sitting there alone at the table, Yosuke wondered to himself how he'd missed the signs. Had she actually given him any signs? After all, she was an ace detective, so she'd be really good at throwing people off guard, and at covering her tracks. The only reason Chie and Yukiko had probably guessed was because of Kanji, who was always staring at Naoto and probably knew when she'd had a different kind of cereal for breakfast. Not that Kanji was a creep, or anything, but…Yosuke had always been just a little annoyed about the way he was always following Naoto around.

She'd been worried about him, he realized. It had been back when they'd first come out of the Velvet Room after witnessing the Adachi and Minako fiasco, and Yosuke had been struggling just to breathe. Naoto had waited for him, talking to him and asking if he was okay. She'd had this strange, sad sort of look in her eyes then, a look that had weirded him out before, and that he could only assume was some sign of love, now. Actually, she'd been doing that sort of thing a lot, lately, now that he came to think about it.

Naoto had been the one who picked him up when he was acting like a useless sack of misery, and who had encouraged him when he'd run out of ideas. What, he wondered, would happen now? Would she avoid him? In her shoes, he knew that he'd probably do that. The thought of that kinda pissed him off, although he wasn't quite sure why. He didn't want things to be awkward between them, all of a sudden. He didn't like the idea of her keeping out of his way. Sure, maybe life sucked right now, but at least Naoto was always around to make him feel a little better. She wasn't a quitter, and that was sort of inspiring, or something, for a pseudo-leader like him. Anyway, it helped him force himself out of bed in the morning, for what that was worth.

A curly haired girl in jeans and a t-shirt walked by his table, and just for a moment, from behind, she looked a little bit like Saki. Yosuke was used to that sort of thing, by now. He saw Saki everywhere, and he'd stopped looking for her or getting excited when his mind tried to trick him into thinking that she was around the next corner. It made him think, though, of the time when he and Minako had been sitting together in Junes, and he'd started droning on at her about how Saki had been the kind of girl who'd made coming to work more exciting, and had made the mornings something to look forward to. Sure, Maybe Minako hadn't gotten him. She'd taken what he'd told her and gone off to make out with Saki's killer, and that…that wasn't even something Yosuke wanted to think about, right now. Naoto, though, Naoto was different. Naoto got it. She got what it meant to care about somebody, to help them up when they were falling down. She knew how valuable that extra boost of confidence was, and she'd wanted to give that to him. That was something. No, it was more than something. It had kept him going when things got crazy tough.

"Hey, Naoto!" he called after her, standing up and looking off in the direction that she'd gone.

It was too late, though. He couldn't see her anyway. She'd probably run for it, again.

**Distracted Detective: Chapter Five**

**Chapter Five**

Yosuke ran off down the street. Naoto couldn't, he knew, have gotten that far ahead of him, even if she was running for her life.

He wasn't wrong. Only a few minutes later, he caught up her with as she was about to turn the corner and head down the road back towards her grandpa's place.

"Naoto!" he shouted, waving his arms emphatically as he rushed to catch up with her. "Hey, Naoto, hang on a second!"

Naoto stopped in her tracks, turned around, and raised an eyebrow at him. He was pretty sure that he saw her wince as they made eye contact.

"Yes, senpai?" she asked politely. "Was there something else?"

"Uh, yeah," mumbled Yosuke. "Listen, my shift ends at three o'clock today, okay? So…I dunno, do you want to maybe go somewhere after I'm done with work? Nowhere fancy, though, I'm kinda broke at the moment."

The question caught Naoto completely off of her guard. Yosuke was almost impressed with himself when he saw her mouth drop open in sheer surprise.

"You mean…with you?" asked Naoto, a bit shakily. "On an evening out? Is this…would this be a 'date?'"

Yosuke didn't really have a good answer to that. With Naoto, he figured, honesty here would probably be his best bet.

He shrugged. "Uh, actually, I don't really know. Is that…is that okay? Anyway, can't we sort of figure that out when we get there?"

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Naoto's eyes narrowed, and she gave him a long, appraising look. "I would hate to cast aspersions, but…you are not making fun of me, are you, senpai? I am sure that I need not inform you that such a joke, at the moment, would be in very poor taste."

Yosuke threw up his hands in protest. "What? No way! I would never do something like that."

Naoto nodded once, and she took a quick breath. "Yes," she murmured. "Yes, of course, I…should never have asked you that. You're not like that at all. You're…you're quite different than most people."

Again, her ears went pink, and Yosuke found himself smirking a little. It was almost cute the way she tried not to blush like that. "So?" he asked. "Are you, uh, coming with me?"

Again, Naoto nodded. "I think I would like that," he said quietly. "Yes. Thank you, that would be…very nice."

Yosuke's heart suddenly felt a bit lighter. "Great," he said. "Yeah, um, I guess I'll come by your Grandpa's house after work, okay?"

Naoto shook her head. "There's no need," she assured him. "I will meet you, as usual, at the food court."

They went their separate ways, then. Naoto headed home, and Yosuke returned to work, where he was sure that he would now have a lot of questions to answer, both from his boss and coworkers, and from Chie, Yukiko, and Teddie, who would definitely be lying in wait to ambush him as soon as he walked in.

It didn't really mater, though, he thought, reaching out to push open the door. He could take it. He had no idea just what he'd say, but there were way more important things to worry about right now, like…where the hell was he going to take Naoto after work? At least she probably wasn't the kind of girl who'd expect him to pay for it…

**Fin.**

**The Truth About Love**

**Ninth Story: The Truth About Love**

**Summary: **Minako has a question for Adachi, but frankly, Adachi's tired of everyone asking him questions. He's ready for some answers. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Adachi, Minako.

"Tohru?"

Adachi froze as soon as he heard her voice. He'd been sitting in Igor's chair with his feet up on the arm of his own, staring, as usual, at the far wall when the tapping of her footsteps had first echoed against the floor. As he heard her approach him from behind, he tried to control his face, which was stiffening and tingling with a strange, awkward sort of tension that was forcing him into some cross between a smile and a grimace as he desperately begged himself not to spin around and reach for her.

"Hi there," he managed, making a big show of taking his time about turning around, throwing one arm lazily over the chair back as he made himself face her. "What are you doing here?"

Minako smiled, and her smile lit up the room. Adachi decided he'd preferred it before, when it was gloomy and boring. Now, his heart was pounding like an overworked metronome on speed. Damn, he thought. He'd been sure that he was over this part. So much for that, huh?

"I wanted to see you," she said. "I..I was worried about you."

The tenderness in her voice made him feel a little sick. "Why?" he snarled. "What's to worry about?"

Minako blinked. "Your injury," she reminded him, looking a bit uncertain of her ground for the first time. "You…well, there was a lot of blood. I thought-!"

"I'm fine," interrupted Adachi coldly.

"Oh," murmured Minako."Well, that's good. I'm glad."

Long, uncomfortable pauses were always worse in the Velvet Room, reflected Adachi as the moments ticked by between them. There was something so creepily soundless about the place. It made all the unsaid stuff feel even louder.

"How about you?" he asked, after a moment, cursing himself inwardly as he listened to his voice softening despite his best resolve. "You been wearing yourself out with this persona crap?"

Minako shook her head. "No, thank you. I'm fine. I'm getting used to it, again."

"Yeah," grunted Adachi. Again, there was that horrible, audible silence. "Anyway," he said eventually, "I told you not to come back here. Not unless you've got something for me."

He sneered at her, hoping to repulse her and frighten her off, if only to stop the aching feeling in his chest that he got whenever he couldn't keep from looking at her. He should have known better. Minako, the idiot, wasn't scared of anything, and definitely not of him. She barely had enough sense for half a person, that way.

"I wanted to ask you something," she informed him.

Adachi rolled his eyes. "Jeez, you and everybody else. What's with the game of twenty questions, huh? First Dojima-san, now you…"

That seemed to perk Minako up a bit. "Oh, Dojima-san's been here?" she asked. "Did you talk much?"

Adachi shut that one down pretty quickly. "Nope," he said. "I threw him out on his ass. Literally. Same thing I'm gonna do to you if you don't hurry up. So, what's this big question?"

Minako nodded thoughtfully, biting her lip in that obnoxiously adorable way she had. "Tohru," she said again. God, he loved the way she said his name. He hated that about her. "Tohru, do you want me to be happy?"

Adachi was too annoyed to be really surprised. Actually, most what came out of Minako these days didn't surprise him. If it was what he was least expecting, then he'd begun to learn to expect it. Still, it was definitely a weird question, and it made the blood start to boil through his insides as he took a deep breath, and prepared to bite out the answer.

"What the hell kind of a dumbass question is that?" he asked, through gritted teeth. "Hey, I don't know, maybe you forgot, but I'm the guy who nearly bled out through his chest just because I wanted you to like me. That not good enough? Want me to slice myself open again, maybe cut off a limb, this time, and limp around for a bit begging you to want me anyway? That more your style?"

He'd half expected her to cry, or at least to look hurt, but, of course, Minako didn't even flinch. "That's not what I mean," she told him seriously. "I'm not talking about…about us. You did that because you wanted me to stay with you. I'm talking about me. I want to know if you want me to be happy."

That really did take Adachi aback. It was possibly the most genuinely selfish thing he'd ever heard her say, and he kind of liked it. "Where'd that come from?" he asked.

Minako frowned. "I've been thinking a lot," she told him, sitting down in front of him on the Velvet Room floor. "I've been thinking about what you asked me to do, and about what you want me to say to Yosuke. I didn't understand at first, because I couldn't figure out why that's what you wanted. Why would it matter? We've…we've done all of the things that lovers do. We've been that person to one another. Why would you need me to say it? It wouldn't change the things we do, or what you get out of this. It wouldn't change anything, would it?"

Adachi didn't have anything to say to that. He was too busy trying not to think about the "things that lovers do," which Minako had referenced so glibly. He was trying not to think about those things very, very hard.

"Then I realized," she went on, around his discomfort. "It's not about us at all. We won't change if I tell Yosuke…well, what you want me to tell him. It's just that you want to know if I can live with myself if I say it out loud. If I admit it, then you want to know if I can stomach it. You want to know how saying it out loud will make me feel, don't you? I'm sure that's it."

"That's crap," muttered Adachi. "You're over thinking it. I just want-!"

"So in a way," insisted Minako, cutting him off, "I think you do want me to be happy. You want me to be happy with you. It's not worth it the other way, is it?"

Adachi just shook his head. "Hell if I even know any more," he told her, shaking his head. For some reason, that made Minako smile.

"I'm glad you're all right, anyway," she said, getting to her feet again and taking a step closer to his chair. "You look…tired, though. I know you don't need sleep, here, but there are lines under your eyes, like you're exhausted." Carefully, she traced one finger along Adachi's cheek, just below his eyelid. It reminded him of that time at the riverbank, when she'd hurried to assure him that he was human to the touch.

"Knock it off," he mumbled. Minako ignored him.

Instead, she ran a hand through his hair, looking into his eyes in a way that he wasn't used to, mostly because she'd never really been able to look into his eyes like that before.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

There was something in those words that pissed him off, made him desperate. He didn't want to hear "I'm sorry." He didn't want her to apologize, because he didn't want there to be anything to apologize for. It made it sound like there wasn't anything else to come, like she'd already decided to feel bad about not doing something he was still frantically hoping she'd do. Without thinking about it, he caught her hand against his cheek and pressed it there, bringing her fingers to his lips and savoring that contact for a moment.

"Tohru," she whispered.

Whatever had gotten a hold on him suddenly released him again, and he dropped her hand like a flaming dead fish. It fell with a little smack against her side, and he scowled down at it, like it had become the enemy in that moment.

"I told you before," he said, turning away from her again. "I don't want your pity. I don't need 'sorry.' That shit's no use. Just…just get out, will you?"

"Okay," said Minako quietly. "I'll go."

And, somewhat to Adachi's horror, she did. He heard her footsteps retreating across the floor, and when he turned around again to look for her, she'd already disappeared through the Velvet Room door.

"Wha-?" he whispered, his lips and cheek still actively tingling from her touch.

"You," intoned Igor from somewhere behind him, "are truly terrible at communicating with other humans. It is…interesting. I am not sure that I have ever had the privilege of watching such a complex and disastrous interpersonal failure as you have proven to be. Intriguing."

Adachi glowered at him.

Much like Minako, however, Igor didn't seem to care.

**Fin.**

**To Whom it May Concern: Chapter One**

**Tenth Story: To Whom it May Concern**

**Summary: **Nanako exchanges a couple of painstakingly handwritten letters with Ken, and finds that writing things down is sometimes the key to helping them make sense in her own head.

**Character Focus: **Nanako, Ken.

**Chapter One**

Nanako frowned down at a big piece of lined paper that she'd brought home from her teacher's desk at school.

She did not, as a rule, like writing letters. Handwriting and penmanship were not two things that Nanako was not very good at, no matter how hard she'd tried, and she really had tried. She always knew what it was she'd written, and she could read it back to her Dad or to her teacher just fine, but whenever someone else tried to read it aloud, they struggled to figure out the curly parts of her Rs and Ps, and where her S began and her T stopped.

That had bothered her a lot in kindergarten, but when she'd moved into first grade, it didn't seem to matter so much. After all, in first grade the teacher had a computer, and she showed them how to use it. After that, writing homework was easy for Nanako. She'd just type her stories and her responses up on the computer, and have Dad print them out before school the next day. It wasn't that she ever had trouble coming up with ideas, or answering the questions. She just couldn't write the letters the way she wanted. The computer was the perfect solution. Nanako, of course, got excellent grades. That was very important o her. Mom would have been really happy with her clever daughter's grades, she thought.

Today, though, when Nanako had walked in to her Dad's room to ask him to use the computer, she'd hit a snag. He'd been busy, very busy, the kind of busy that made his hair all crazy and his eyes sort of big and scary looking. She'd asked him if she could type something, and he'd waved her away with one hand, not even looking at her. Whatever he was doing was obviously important, or at least, whatever Nanako was going to do wasn't important enough. It had been like that a lot lately, with Dad. He always seemed to be thinking about something else, and it was never something that looked very nice to think about, or made him smile.

There hadn't been any other way around it, so Nanako had taken a deep breath, summoned her courage, and sat down at her little desk in her own room to try and write a letter.

The letter began like this (or at least, it would have if anyone could actually read it, Nanako reasoned):

_Dear Ken-kun,_

_Hello! Can you read what I am writing? My teacher says that my handwriting is not good, so I do not know, but I will try. I hope it is not too hard. I wanted to type it, but Dad is busy with the computer, so maybe this will work._

_How are you? We are all very busy here. Big Bro went back to school last week. That was sad. He said that he will visit, though, in two months for the spring break! I am excited! Maybe you can visit too. I think Big Bro would like it if you and the others came back. We are sort of lonely here, now. I wish you did not go away._

_Everyone here is very quiet. No one is happy, but I do not know why. They all are angry a lot and talking to each other like they do not want anyone to hear. Dad does not say much, he mostly works, but that is not new. Oh, but you will like to know this: Minako is fine. She is doing much better, and her eyes work now so she can see lots of stuff and will not get hit by a car, I think. That is good! I like Minako. I wish everyone was not so angry. I am not angry._

_Minako does not go to work anymore. Dad says it is better because he is angry, but I think he misses her because there are too many phone calls. Minako likes work, so I do not know why she does not go. Maybe she is angry, too. Or maybe sad. Sometimes, I am sad._

_Everyone is angry, here. I am lonely. Is it nice where you live? I would like to visit. Would that be okay? I hope that is not a rude thing to ask. Dad says that it is rude to invite myself to some place, but it is not an invitation, I am just asking._

_Thank you for being so nice when you were here. It made me very happy. Please come back soon._

_Your Friend_

_Nanako Dojima_

Nanako read the letter over again twice before folding it up and slipping it into an envelope.

Well, she thought. At least she could read all of the words.

**To Whom it May Concern: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

Three days later, Nanako came in after spending some time playing outside with her friends, to find a sealed envelope sitting on the kitchen table. The envelope had her name on it, and so she decided that, since it was addressed to her, she could probably get away with opening it without asking Dad about it first.

She took it into her bedroom, and flopped down on the bed, shaking her shoes off of her feet over the side of the bed before stretching out and eagerly tearing the letter open, trying to be careful enough not to mess up whatever paper was inside.

Of course, the letter was from Ken, which was wonderful. Nanako, who was a good reader, still had to be a little more careful than usual as she worked her way through each of the words. After all, Ken was a lot older than she was. He was already in middle school. He knew a lot of very long words. Still, Nanako decided that she would read the whole thing by herself. Somehow, she didn't want Dad to know that she was writing to Ken. There was no good reason for that, but it was a feeling, and she'd learned long ago that feelings weren't something to be ignored. They usually meant something, something important, even if she couldn't figure out what that was or what they were for right away.

The letter, once Nanako had managed, with some difficulty, to read through it, was written like this:

_Dear Nanako-chan,_

_I think your writing is very good. Reading your letter was easy, actually. Thank you for writing to me._

_Thank you also for telling me about Minako. We're all a little worried about her, here, but it's great to know that she can see and is doing better. Yes, I'm pretty sure she won't get hit by a car, now, and that's definitely good, but please keep an eye on her anyway, just in case. She gets herself into a lot of trouble. Akihiko-san says that's just who she is. Shinjiro-san says other things, but maybe I won't write them in this letter. I like Minako too. How is Junpei-san? Maybe he's even more trouble than she is. She looks out for him, I know, but it can be really hard. I remember that from when we all lived together at the dorm. Sorry, but could you keep an eye on him too?_

_Sorry that everyone's still angry. Well, not everyone, right? Kanji and Naoto aren't angry, are they? Actually, how is Kanji? I can't really tell you why I want to know that, but maybe you'll figure it out for yourself, you are pretty good at figuring things out._

_Oh, yeah, that's what I wanted to say. I don't think you should be so sad. You're a really happy person. That's great. You're fun to be around. Maybe that's what people need; someone who can help them figure out how to have fun again. You're always smiling. It's nice, it picks people up. Maybe you should just do that. It's hard to be in a bad mood when you're around. I know someone else who used to be like that. Can you guess who it is? I like her a lot, too._

_Of course you can come visit. That would be fun. Not spring break though, because your cousin is coming, right? See, I told you I could read your letter. How about next summer? I live with Akihiko-san. Is that okay? Maybe you should stay with girls. Wait, I think your Dad is probably reading this to you. Hello, Dojima-san, sir. Yes, you should stay with girls._

_It was fun to hear from you. Please write again,_

_Your friend,_

_Ken Amada_

Nanako folded the letter up carefully, and tucked it back into the envelope. She felt really good about that letter. Not only had been able to read it, but he'd been happy to get it! She'd been worried that maybe he thought she was annoying. She thought he was so cool.

As she placed the envelope into her dresser drawer, Nanako thought about what Ken had said. Was being happy really enough to make other people happy? Thinking about the look she'd seen a few days ago on her dad's face, and the way that everyone was wandering around looking miserable and not talking to one another, Nanako really didn't think so.

Still, Ken was a lot older than her, and he knew lots of things about people.

Maybe it was worth giving happiness a try.

**Armageddon: Chapter One**

**Eleventh Story: Armageddon**

**Summary: **When the leaders of both teams finally meet after long absences from the Velvet Room, tensions are so high that one little understanding leads to a potentially disastrous physical altercation. True colors are brought out by emergencies like these. So are the worst parts of all of us.

**Character Focus: **Yosuke, Minako, Adachi, Junpei, Naoto.

**Chapter One**

With only three days to go until he had to take the train back to college, Yosuke had a lot of thinking to do.

A lot of stuff had happened since he'd first come home for the winter break, so much that he had trouble wrapping his head around just where it all began and ended. He felt like a totally different person than he'd been when he'd started all of this back in December, and there parts of him that had changed so much he didn't recognize them in the midst of the rest of himself, anymore.

He hadn't he knew, been a very good leader. Most of what he considered his time in a leadership position had been spent flailing around and asking other people to help him figure out what to do next and how to stop panicking about it. Even little Nanako had been more put together about the whole thing than he had been, most of the time. There wasn't much there that he was really proud of. All of the things he'd tried to become and wanted to turn into had just left him feeling confused about what sorts of things he really was, and how that fit into the big picture of the person he was supposed to be growing into. Now he wasn't a leader, and wasn't even really a persona user, anymore, since there wouldn't be much more use for that. That was great, since it meant that everything was cleared up, but…what did that mean about where he was going? What was he supposed to do now?

The real world was waiting for him, and he could go back to school, now, and live a normal life again…that is, if "normal" was actually a real thing that existed, that anyone could really go back to. Yosuke had forgotten how to make sense out of normal. The real world was miles away from what he was used to, these days.

Then, of course, there was Naoto. After their little 'date' at the movies the other day, she seemed pretty happy, and even he had to admit to himself that he'd really had a good time. She was easy to talk to, maybe because of how comfortable they'd always been around each other as members of the investigation team, and she got him on levels that other 'normal' people probably wouldn't. Still, it wasn't like they'd talked about her feelings for him after that one awkward afternoon at Souzai Daigaku, and Naoto seemed perfectly happy not to ever bring it up in conversation again. She wasn't gonna broach it, and Yosuke didn't have the balls, quite frankly.

That, he knew, would be a problem, when he left in three days. Being miles away at college was going to change the situation, whatever that was, and maybe it would be better to get that sorted about before he ran off to try and live his life the way most kids did. Plus, he knew, there was Chihiro-senpai. A couple of months ago, he'd been trying to work up the courage to ask her out, or at least to ask her to spend more time with him outside of the library. Was that still the plan? That whole thing felt like such a long time ago…but if he did go back, and did try to fit back into his life and into Chihiro's life, then what would that do to Naoto? Would she be angry? Would she be sad? Would she go running back to cry on Kanji's shoulder?  
That made Yosuke sneer to himself. Sure, like Kanji could ever really be on the same plane of reality as someone like Naoto. Yeah, he liked Kanji, even respected him sometimes, but…seriously? With Naoto? That could never happen, right?

Yosuke knew he needed help in the worst way, and there was only one person he felt comfortable asking about any of this, and especially about the Naoto stuff. Sure, Chie and Yukiko were great, and he'd trust them with his life any day, but this was not his life. This had to do with something much scarier than any shadow battle would ever be.

With that in mind, he pulled out his cellphone and dialed the most frequently called number. It took a second before the person on the other end picked up.

"Hey," said Yu. There was street noise in the background as he talked. "What's up? Haven't heard from you in a few days."

"You out of school?" asked Yosuke.

"Yeah," replied Yu. "Just walking home now. Why?"

The idea of Yu "walking home" from school made Yosuke grin to himself. Okay, so the leadership thing hadn't been a total failure, in the end.

"Um, you free later?" he asked. "I was wondering if maybe I could talk to you about something."

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Yosuke sighed. Yu was always pretty good at figuring out the exact nature of whatever Yosuke's "something" was, just y listening to the tones in his voice. Part of his people skills, Yosuke guessed.

"What's up this time?" asked Yu again.

Yosuke shook his head. "Girls," he muttered.

"Girls?" Now, Yu sounded startled. "Wait, really? Yeah, sure I'm free. Want me to meet you in the Velvet Room?"

They agreed on a time, and then Yosuke hung up, slipping his phone back into his pocket and starting off in the direction of the Velvet Room street entrance. Long distance friendships, he reflected, were a pain in the ass, but being friends with a guy who could travel through TVs definitely had its advantages. Sure, it would take Yu hours to get there by train, but using the TV world took care of it in no time. That, he realized, might be his solution to the Naoto problem…sort of. Part of the Naoto problem, anyway.

It was only as he opened the Velvet Room door that Yosuke remembered why it was that he'd tried not to make a habit of using the Velvet Room as a meeting place.

"Aw, crap," muttered Adachi, looking up from the persona compendium on which it looked like he might have been drawing a stupid moustache. "And here I thought my day just couldn't get any worse…"

Yosuke gritted his teeth. Yeah, he thought. It was like the guy had taken the words right out of his mouth.

**Armageddon: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

"Sup?" muttered Junpei, appearing out of the Velvet Room shadows to give Yosuke a surly look.

Yosuke just stared at him. "Wait…seriously? You too? The hell's going on here?"

Junpei and Adachi exchanged a far from friendly look. "Don't know what you're talking about," retorted Junpei with a shrug "I'm just waiting for Minako. She said she wanted to do some training, to work off some of that stress, I guess." He glared at Yosuke, and said, with obvious accusation in his voice, "Gee, I wonder what she's so stressed out about…any ideas, Yosuke?"

Adachi rolled his eyes. "Don't look at me," he mumbled, "I just work here." He gave the walls of the Velvet Room a bored, disinterested glance, and then turned back around to face Yosuke with a malicious glint in his eyes. "I don't know, though," he told Junpei, with a complete lack of effort at sincerity. "Maybe you shouldn't be so tough on this guy. I mean, it's gotta be pretty hard, watching your worst enemy get the girl you always wanted. Cause hey, Yosuke, you know I'm fucking her, right? Oh yeah, you've definitely been thinking about that…hell, it's written all over your jealous, piece of shit face. Yeah, that's definitely gotta suck."

Junpei bit his lip, hard. "Don't talk about her like she's some kinda piece of meat," he growled. "She's too good for you, anyway."

"And hey," continued Adachi glibly, obviously beginning to enjoy this. "That's two little girlfriends you've lost to me now, right? Damn that really…that's pretty bad. No, I totally get why you're pissed. I'd be pissed off too. Yeah, I'd…"

Yosuke saw red. There was sweat running down the back of his neck as he completely failed to tune Adachi out. Before he'd had time to get a hold of himself and figure out what he was doing, he had lunged at Adachi, and was grabbing the other man around the throat with both hands.

"Shit," managed Adachi hoarsely.

With one energetic shove, Yosuke threw Adachi into the nearest Velvet Room wall. Adachi raised an arm to defend himself, but it never connected with Yosuke at all. Adachi looked just as surprised as Yosuke was when his blow didn't reach his opponent.

"What the-?" began Adachi.

From somewhere in the recesses of the room, Igor's voice echoed out at them, firm and cold.

"The attendant," bellowed Igor, "is forbidden from harming the guests. You will not raise a hand against our visitors, Tohru Adachi."

"Shit," snarled Adachi again.

Yosuke snorted derisively. "Isn't it a little late for that?" he demanded. "Hasn't he harmed enough people already? Hasn't he harmed me enough?" Adding emphasis to his words, he slammed Adachi's head against the wall again, and was a little freaked out by how much enjoyed listening to the crack as Adachi's skull connected to whatever sort of magical, psychologically-based concrete the walls were made of. Adachi grunted in pain, and that was good, too.

Junpei suddenly stepped forward and shoved Yosuke off of Adachi, placing himself between the two of them. "Hey, knock it off," he said. "Look, I don't like him any better than you do, but-!"

Yosuke, however, was way past the point of seeing reason. He could still hear Adachi's last taunt about losing Saki and Minako to him. It was echoing around in his head in those insane, taunting tones of voice that Adachi always used whenever Yosuke imagined any kind of conversation with him.

"You have no fucking idea what you're talking about," Yosuke spat at Junpei.

"No, look," insisted Junpei. "I get it, I get that he's a piece of shit, but the guy can't even defend himself. This is crazy, you're not…I mean, okay. I hate you. You hate me. Sure, cool, but you're not the kind of guy to beat up someone without a weapon, right? So come on, man, let this one go."

"You don't get it," shouted Yosuke. "How the hell could you ever get it?" He spun angrily on Junpei. "You're always acting like you're such a smart guy, like you know everything. You don't. You don't know anything about this, you don't know what it's like to feel like this, to have someone taken away from you. You don't-!"

"Minako," muttered Junpei.

Yosuke just shook his head fiercely. "She came back!" He almost screamed. "She fucking came back!"

There was silence between them for the longest instant in Yosuke's memory, and then suddenly he heard the door open, and a familiar set of footsteps were echoing against the floor.

"Yosuke-senpai?" called Naoto, stepping into the light. "Chie-senpai said that you might have come here…wait, what are you doing?"

Yosuke turned around to answer Naoto, and Junpei took advantage of that moment to grab him by the arm and try to pull him forcefully away from Adachi. Yosuke responded to that by hauling off and punching Junpei in the jaw, which sent him staggering back until he sank down on to the ground, holding his face and sputtering angrily while he spat out blood. That, thought Yosuke, felt good too, and it felt even better when he remembered that he owed Junpei one from the hit he'd taken a few days ago in that awful Velvet Room conflict when he'd first found Adachi and Minako together.

Yosuke was feeling pumped up and positive, until he looked up and saw the shocked, almost accusing expression on Naoto's face. She crossed over towards where Junpei had fallen, and as she moved, her gun tumbled out of its holster and on to the ground. Just a few feet short of where Junpei was sitting, Naoto paused, bent down, and retrieved her gun. She stood up again, and opened her mouth to speak, but never had the chance.

Yet again, Yosuke heard the Velvet Room door open. Junpei and Naoto looked up to see who it was, but Yosuke was too busy staring at Junpei, shaking his head and taking deep breaths, trying to bring himself back to the moment.

"Junpei," he muttered. "Um…that was…I didn't…"

Adachi muttered a strangled curse, and Yosuke finally did look up, just in time to figure out why everyone else in the room had gone suddenly, disturbingly quiet.

**Armageddon Chapter Three**

**Chapter Three**

Minako was feeling strained to her limits. It had been days since she'd had any really good sleep, and the subsequent headaches were keeping her permanently on edge. There were very few places that she seemed to be able to go to relax. When she was alone at home, her mind kept running in circles over the mess she'd made of things in Inaba, and she had to force herself not to want to think about or rush off to try and see Tohru. Every time she left the house, she risked running into Naoto, Rise, or one of the countless others who would glare at her as she walked by. She hated the sick, guilty way that made her feel, especially since she was still pretty sure that the only wrong she'd done was to care about someone when no one else did. In any case, lately it had been easier juts to keep her head down, but that got lonely and she ended up driving herself to distraction.

Minako wasn't usually the sort of person who engaged in combat just for fun, but when Junpei had suggested training together in the TV world, she'd jumped at the chance. Maybe that, she thought, would at least allow her to let off a little bit of stress and steam. Plus, partnering up with Junpei for anything always proved to be an excellent distraction.

Unfortunately, that day she had lost track of time, and so she was late to the Velvet Room to meet him. She heard the raised voices behind the door before she opened it, and therefore hurried in immediately when she realized that she'd inadvertently left Junpei and Yosuke alone together. Yosuke, of course, was one of the last people on earth that Minako wanted to see or speak to right now, but she knew how he felt about Junpei. They had been at odds since the very beginning, and who knew what could happen if they were left to their own devices?

"Junpei!" she called, as the door closed behind her. "I'm sorry I'm late, I was just-!"

Her voice faltered and failed her as she took in the scene.

Yosuke was standing with arm raised, while Junpei sat in front of him on the floor, looking furious. There was obviously at fight in progress. Tohru was there, too, but Minako barely had time to notice him. She was too busy gaping at Naoto, who was standing over Junpei with her gun clutched in one hand.

As soon as Junpei saw Minako, he began struggling to his feet. "Mina-tan," he said warningly, crossing over to her and taking a hold of her shoulder. "Hey, this isn't what it looks like, okay?"

Minako continued to stare fixedly at the gun. She could feel herself breathing differently, strangely, as though it was harder to get the air in and out.

"Hey," exclaimed Junpei. "Are you listening to me? Look, look at me."

Minako, however, was not listening. She couldn't see Junpei either, not really. All she could see now was the horrible image behind her eyes, the image of the recurring nightmare that she'd been having for years. It was the one where she watched while Naoto shot Junpei in the chest, the one where she screamed while Junpei bled to death on the floor and she begged him not to give up. It felt real, very real now, while Yosuke stood there staring and Naoto held on tightly to her weapon, as though getting ready for the next attack.

Junpei was her only real safe haven, she thought. He was the only person she could genuinely rely on all the time, without fail. He was the one who had been willing to make sacrifices for her, even moral ones, and take risks just to stand between her and her own selfish, foolish decisions.

"Mina-tan," repeated Junpei.

Something that had been stretching dangerously inside the panicked, stifled parts of Minako's mind finally weakened and snapped.

"Junpei?" she asked, in a voice that felt strange, like it came from someone else, someone very far away. "Are you okay?"

Junpei tightened his grip on her. "Yeah," he assured her quickly. "I'm fine. See? I'm okay." He forced a laugh. "Takes more than a wimpy punch like that to get ol' Junpei down, huh? So come on, let's go. We can train another day."

He kept tugging on Minako's arm, but she wasn't moving. Instead, her eyes were locked now on Yosuke, who was starting to look freaked out, and was backing farther and farther away from her.

Junpei's evoker was lying at his feet, where he must have dropped it when he fell. Slowly, Minako picked it up and ran her fingers over its contours.

"He's not the one you want, is he, Yosuke?" murmured Minako. "No, it's me, right? I'm the one you're angry at. If you're looking for a fight…then you can have one. You can have it with me."

"Wait, hang on," began Yosuke. "What the hell? I don't want to-!"

"Minako-chan, please," said Naoto. "This is foolish. We are all guilty of an unfortunate misunderstanding, and a lapse in moral judgment…perhaps one that has gone on, by this time, for far too long."

Minako barely even heard them. She kept seeing blood, Junpei's blood, in the back of her mind. It was everywhere in her head, just the way Tohru's blood had been everywhere only weeks ago when she'd rushed to his side after he'd nearly murdered himself in the nightmare room. She was not going to let that happen to someone else. She was not going to let Junpei get hurt because of her. Not again. Not ever.

Aigis was right, thought Minako. In the real moment of crisis, in the real instant of decision, she knew exactly what to do. She was the leader, the leader of SEES, not of anyone else. She had responsibilities to the people who had her back, just the way Yosuke felt he did.

Minako lifted Junpei's' evoker to her head, and pulled the trigger.

"Messiah," she whispered, as her persona exploded into physical being. "Megidolaon."

**Armageddon: Chapter Four**

**Author's Note: **My goodness, the responses to the last few chapters have...well, interesting and in many cases unexpected, to say the least. I am not quite sure what I have done, here.

Oh well, I suppose it is far too late to turn back now.

**Chapter Four**

Yosuke jumped backwards, just in time to avoid the first Almighty blast that came from Minako's persona. Without stopping even to catch her breath, Minako readied Messiah for a second attack.

Caught up in the onslaught and the blinding images of blood, she was only barely aware of the frantic conversation going on behind her.

"This is…insanity," Naoto was saying. "They cannot…they must not fight each other like this. Nothing could possibly be worth…this is horrible. What have we created?"

"Nah, you've got it all wrong," muttered Junpei, having finally let go of Minako when her persona had materialized. "She's not gonna fight him…hell, she's gonna kill him."

"What?" squeaked Naoto. "No, you're…you're overreacting. That is a tasteless exaggeration. They're comrades, we are all comrades. We could never-!"

"She thought you were going to kill me!" shouted Junpei, suddenly reaching out and shaking Naoto by the shoulders. "Don't you get it? Did you see the look on her face when she walked in? We lost control of this situation a long time ago, damnit. Frankly, so did she, and it's been a long time coming. It's not her damn fault. What the hell are you waiting for?" Releasing her, he jerked his head towards Yosuke, who now seemed to have pulled himself together enough to summon Susano-o and to prepare something of a defense. "I thought you had a thing for him. So? Get in there and defend him! Now!"

Another blast of Megidolaon met a gust of Garudyne midway between Yosuke and Minako, and the collision of the two powerful attacks rocked even the non-existent foundations of the Velvet Room.

"I could hurt her," murmured Naoto, obviously torn. "I don't wish to hurt her, I…I never wanted for any of this to happen. I treasured our alliance, I-!"

This time, the attack did connect, and Yosuke stumbled. Naoto's head snapped around and there was suddenly fire in her eyes as she placed her hand on the gun she'd newly retrieved.

"If you don't do something," insisted Junpei, "then she's gonna beat the shit out of him. Minako's no slouch, okay? You don't save the world by being a lightweight. She'll be fine. Go at least put up a defensive barrier, or something." As Yosuke's persona made a lunge for Minako's unprotected right side, Junpei rushed forward to parry the thrust with his own weapon. "But you better not fucking hurt her, or I'll kill you."

"That…that makes no sense at all!" exclaimed Naoto frantically. Nevertheless, as Minako prepared a physical attack, Naoto summoned her persona and assumed a combat stance, her eyes darting back and forth between Yosuke, Minako, and the newly determined set of Junpei's injured jaw.

For the first time, as Junpei moved in beside her, Minako glanced away from her opponent's face.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "Get out of here, this is my fight."

"This is nobody's fight," muttered Junpei, shaking his head. "This is a nightmare. It's a mess, that's what it is. Snap out of it, huh? Before somebody gets really hurt…probably me. You know, cause I'm not leaving till you do, so. You do the math."

Minako, dutifully, did the math.

"I won't let anything happen to you," she assured him. "I promise."

Junpei sighed. "Why didn't that work?" he asked of no one in particular. "That should have worked…jeez, we're all gonna die. Come on, let's just go…"

Minako had Yosuke in her sights again. She just managed to duck out of the way of a physical hit and was about to lob yet another fiercely magical volley in his direction when she was aware of a pair of hands gripping her wrists from behind, She tried angrily to pull away, but whoever was hanging on to her wasn't giving up so easily.

"Let go of me," she snarled.

"So you can do what?" asked Tohru. "So you can kill him? Is that what you want?"

That tugged at something in the back of Minako's clouded head, and she paused for a moment, trying to think genuinely about the answer to that question. Was that what she was trying to do? Would that end all of this? Would that make this horrible, bloody mess of misery in her head go away?

"Because I'm pretty sure you've completely lost it," continued Tohru. There was something so level, so relaxed about his voice that it caught her off guard. He wasn't anxious, or frantic, or panicked. He was wry and unconcerned, just the way he always was. The perverseness of that was cutting through to Minako, making her angry and confused at the same time.

"You want to know something? Yeah, well, I don't care, cause obviously I'm gonna tell you anyway," Tohru said quietly. "I don't know if you can even hear me through whatever self righteous messiah-complex shit you've got going on in there. You wanna end up like me? You wanna spend the rest of your life in some kind of smelly prison, wondering what might have been different if you'd played it another way? You wanna be the monster old people tell their stupid kids about when they're trying to get them to go the fuck to sleep and stop begging for more stories? That what you want? That gonna make you happy?"

Minako faltered. She was having trouble dividing her attention between his voice and the painful images in her head.

"Look," said Tohru. "Hell if I'm gonna stop you, I hate this kid. I hate his dumbass guts. I think the world'd be better off if you did kill him. Fewer messy idiots who wanna be fucking heroes is exactly how I want my world."

Abruptly, Tohru released Minako's arms. Startled, she froze for a moment, staring across at Yosuke, who was also very still, with Susano-o poised in front of him, waiting for the next blow.

"No," she murmured, as the haze started clearing away from her eyes, and for the first time she started to feel the aching in her limbs and the collection of choking tears that was making its way up the back of her throat. "He is a hero. That's not stupid at all. You're wrong."

Tohru sighed. "Oh, good," he muttered. "Looks like you're still there after all. Jeez…well, it was fun while it lasted."

Suddenly, Minako was aware of how closely she was clutching her naginata, holding in a knuckle-whitening death grip as it stood between her and Yosuke's half-hearted assaults. She stared down at it in horror, and then dropped it to the floor, where it clanged and lay still, gleaming up at her.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

Footsteps strolled through the Velvet Room door, then stopped stock-still as whoever it was apparently took in the carnage.

"What…Yosuke? What's happening?" asked Yu, sounding shaken and shocked.

Minako felt dizzy. She'd been using her persona too much and for too long, she realized. She'd completely exhausted her energy stores. As she sank down to her knees on the ground, she called out, repeating the last word she'd heard in some sort of last ditch attempt to express something that she wasn't finished feeling yet. "Yosuke?"

Then, the world went black.

**Armageddon: Chapter Five**

**Author's Note: **I will…I will finish this story tonight. Oh god, I have such a horrible headache…I think my brain is staging an active protest, although I'm not sure quite against what. They did say that this would happen if I kept drinking too much coffee…

Let's just try to get this over with before I lose the ability to focus on what's in front of me.

**Chapter Five**

When Minako opened her eyes again, she was still in the Velvet Room. She was still, in fact, lying on the Velvet Room floor, which was uncomfortably cold and rigid against her aching back.

"Oh," she murmured, as reality, giving her no respite whatsoever, came flooding back through her brain."Oh…no."

"Oh yeah," agreed Junpei. Minako glanced over to see that he was sitting propped up against the wall only a few inches from where she lay. "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Wow. Tell you what, though, life as your friend…it's never boring."

"Junpei," murmured Minako. "You're okay? You're not hurt?"

Junpei shook his head. "Been okay the whole time," he assured her. "Yep, not a scratch on me…okay, that's a lie, my face hurts like a mother fucker, but you can't really fault the guy too much…I mean, maybe it was weeks ago, but I kinda did throw the first punch. Still, kinda embarrassing that I went down that easily, you know? Oh well., Maybe I need that training more than I thought I did…uh, another day, though. We can start tomorrow. Maybe."

It took Minako a moment to remember exactly what punch Junpei was talking about. "Yosuke," she muttered miserably. "Please, please tell me I didn't…"

"Nope, but you tried," said Junpei. "And man, I wasn't wrong about you, you're a machine in battle…just knocking out those attacks one after another…isn't that what I said? That you're no lightweight?"

Minako didn't say anything. She just blinked down in horror at the blue patterns on the floor.

"That nightmare again, right?" asked Junpei, lowering his voice a little, and dropping some of his usual jaunty bravado. "That what it was?"

Minako nodded. "Every time I close my eyes, these days," she admitted. "And that's…that's not very often. It's hard to sleep…to think straight." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Junpei shrugged. "What are you sorry for? Don't gotta say sorry to me. Like I'm gonna judge you. Nice to know that if it had all been real, you would have had my back. Hey, maybe I'll need that someday, but God, I hope not." He clapped her on the shoulder, and gave it a comforting squeeze. "But it was all in your head, okay? It's over now. Like it never happened…cause it didn't. Got it?"

Minako sighed. "No," she said. "No, it wasn't all in my head. Not all of it." Now she could very easily picture the horrified look on Yosuke's face as she'd sent sequential assaults blazing after him, her persona rearing up in her memory and looming in for the kill. Minako loved Messiah, had always loved and felt deeply akin to Messiah in a way that was very slightly different and more powerful from even the deep way she'd connected with the rest of her personas. At the moment, though, she hated thinking about it. Somehow, through her, it had betrayed her in her hour of direst need.

"I don't know what I'm gonna say to Yosuke," she mumbled, really thinking out loud more than expecting any response from Junpei.

"Well, you sort of started already," Junpei informed her. "I think maybe something like 'seriously, I just went crazy and that was really not part of the plan, sorry?' might be a good follow up, but you're the people person, not me."

"I…wait, what?" Minako blinked. Junpei was looking at something just past her shoulder, and with a growing sense of dread, she followed his gaze to see Yosuke, also lying on his back and staring at the ceiling several feet to her left.

"Y-Yosuke," she stammered. "Are you hurt?" That seemed to Minako like the incredibly stupid question that it probably was, but it was all she had in her usually ample social arsenal in light of confusing and unexpected recent events.

Yosuke didn't get up. "Yeah," he said. "Ow. Seriously. Pretty sure I picked the wrong fight, this time…ugh, and Naoto had to see it, too. That's…that's not how I would have wanted it to play out. Wonder what she thinks of me now...not so cool, right? Figures."

Something about the way he was talking to her didn't make sense to Minako, and she frowned. "I'm sorry," she informed him carefully.

Yosuke sighed. "Nah, it's cool," he told her

Minako's mouth fell open. "What?" she demanded. "I thought you hated me. And I just tried to kill you!" The world, again, had stopped making any sense. At least, thought Minako, that was something that she was accustomed to, sort of.

"You didn't try to kill me, exactly," Yosuke corrected her. "It was uh…a side effect, yeah. Of you being really, really pissed off." He turned his head and for a moment, their eyes met across the horizontal plane of the Velvet Room floor. "I thought I hated you, too. I sort of did hate you."

Even though Minako had said it herself, that still stung a little. "I know," was alls he managed in response.

There was a brief interlude, during which Yosuke chewed on his lip, and rubbed at a place on his arm that Minako could now see was tied up with a bandage.

"Guess I had you wrong," he said eventually.

Minako didn't know what to say.

"Guess I thought you didn't believe in having your buddy's back," he went on. "That you couldn't put your friends first. That's not it, though, is it? I mean…I don't think I'd be in all this pain if you couldn't do that, so…"

Minako opened her mouth to apologize again, but closed it without speaking. Apologies weren't going to cut it, no matter how many times she found new ways to phrase them. Finally, she said, "Junpei told you about the dream, didn't he?"

Yosuke nodded. "Yeah. You're pretty messed up, you know that?"

Minako couldn't argue with that.

"Maybe I wanted you to put me first," Yosuke muttered. "But, hey, that's different. Not everybody can be your partner, and you've already got one. Made that pretty clear. I guess I was angry about a lot of things. Thought I was angry about something totally different, about Adachi, but that was just part of it."

"I'm in love with him," said Minako, before she'd even realized that the words were coming out of her mouth.

Yosuke flinched. "Yeah, I still hate that," he growled. "That's…that's fucking insane. I can't…do we have to talk about that? I'm trying to mend a bridge here, give me a break."

Mending a bridge, thought Minako, was probably not something that Yosuke had decided to do on his own. She remembered suddenly how Yu had arrived in the Velvet Room just as she was losing consciousness, and was instantly certain that he and Yosuke had been engaged in a lot of intense conversation before she'd managed to wake up.

Minako shook her head. "So," she asked him, "we're…not partners anymore? That can't happen, now, can it?"

"No…uh, I don't think so," mumbled Yosuke. "Doesn't…doesn't seem like that'd work. I don't hate you, though. Gonna have to work with that, for now. Oh, and…I'm sorry about what I said, about wishing I'd let you die. I guess I'm glad you're not dead."

Minako suddenly felt as though she might start to cry, again. It wasn't a happy feeling or a sad feeling, it was just an upswell of so many feelings that they weren't sure how to present themselves any other way. "I'm glad you're not dead too," she told him.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. Well that's…that's good, right?"

**Fin.**

**The Confession: Chapter One**

**Twelfth Story: The Confession**

**Summary: **The hard part is already over. Now all Minako has to do is report her success….that is, if Adachi is still willing to listen to what she has to say. WARNING: Complete Minako x Adachi fluff. Enter at your own risk.

**Character Focus: **Minako, Adachi.

**Chapter One**

It was a long time before Minako felt strong enough to try and move on. Every reserve she had of both physical and emotional strength felt like it had been completely sapped.

"We should go home," said Junpei, when Minako finally peeled herself off of the floor and wobbled to her feet. "You're beat."

Minako shook her head. "I'll go soon. I just…there's something else."

Junpei rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated little breath. "Seriously? Now? You're gonna go chasing after that guy now? Hasn't he caused you enough trouble?"

"Probably," agreed Minako. "But that's not the point, is it?"

Junpei muttered something darkly to himself. "Jeez, maybe I shoulda just let Yosuke rough him up, before. Woulda saved you a lot of trouble in the long run, I guess. Me, too."

Minako blinked at him in surprise. "You should have what?"

"Aw, nothing, forget it." Junpei shook his head. "Just go, get it over with. I'm not gonna wait up for you this time, though. I'm tired, I'm heading out."

Minako smiled. As she walked out of the Velvet Room and into the open TV world, she heard Junpei call something after her.

"And don't take too long!" he shouted. "I've had enough of this place for one day. No, for a week!"

"I thought you weren't going to wait up for me," Minako reminded him.

Junpei waved a hand dismissively at her. "Whatever, make it quick and maybe I won't leave. Least I can do for the crazy girl who thought she was saving my life, right?"

She heard him sigh as he sat back down against the wall, and something inside her lightened, just a bit. Then she stopped for a moment to get her bearings and, after glancing around for a few moments with a puzzled frown on her face, Minako started in the direction in which she was almost sure she'd find Tohru's twisted sanctum .

She'd only been there once before, or at least only once that she could remember. She sometimes had a hard time keeping track of the places that she'd gone when she'd been blind. There were cues, sounds, and signals that she'd recognize, but if those cues and signs weren't there from one day to another, she'd never had known that she was in the same place, at all. It was possible that she'd gone through Tohru's place before, only for some reason, the voices had been silent that day. It was hard to be certain, so she didn't bother dwelling on it much.

Although it did take her a little longer than she'd hoped, instinctively following her eyes instead of her ears, Minako did eventually find the place. It wasn't exactly what she'd expected when she'd imagined what it would look like, either. It was dark, but not drab, full of reds, yellows, browns and blacks, with some sort of indestructible nauseatingly bright yellow caution tape pasted into strange shapes at unexpected angles.

Tohru was standing in the center of one of those caution tape triangles, lounging against an angrily colored wall and staring at his feet with a brooding look on his face. All around them both, Minako could hear the voices echoing, screaming things that Tohru would never be able to put out of his mind.

"You said you'd never come back here," she reminded him quietly. "You promised."

Without looking up, Tohru shook his head. "No way," he muttered. "I don't make promises. Can't be bothered, it's a pain in the ass. Wouldn't keep them anyway."

"Well," reasoned Minako, "you should have made this one, and kept it. It was for your own good, anyway."

Tohru snorted. "Like I've never heard that before."

Minako contemplated for a moment whether she should duck under or try to step over the caution tape. When she looked up again, Tohru was watching her, with one eyebrow raised.

"What?" he asked.

"Thank you," she told him. "For what you said just then. When I was…when I was trying to fight Yosuke."

Tohru shrugged. "Told you I thought you should kill him," he said. "Not something you usually thank somebody for."

"No," insisted Minako, shaking her head,. "I'm not thanking you for that. I'm thanking you for telling me that it wouldn't make me happy."

Adachi laughed his mirthless little laugh. "Again, probably could have figured that one out of yourself, if you'd been thinking clearly. Or at all. Thinking clearly might have been a big step for you, actually. Oh well."

Minako decided to duck under the tape. As she advanced on Tohru, she was rewarded by watching him flinch and recoil ever so slightly from her.

"It's not that, either," she repeated. "It's that you knew it wouldn't make me happy. You told me. That's the answer to my question. You do care if I'm happy or not, don't you?"

"This again," snarled Adachi, rolling his eyes. "Didn't we finish this one up the other day, when you barged in and started asking me shit like-!"

"I told Yosuke," interrupted Minako.

That got Tohru's full attention, Minako noted. He tried not to show it, but he was suddenly listening very, very carefully. As she watched, one of his hands clenched into a fist at his side, before he relaxed it and crossed one leg over the other, like he was trying extra hard to look casual and not to give himself away. Minako saw him swallow nervously.

"Yeah? Told him what?" he asked.

Minako let a beat go by before she answered him. She was hoping to wait until she forced him to meet her gaze, but Tohru was better at playing the nonchalant, disinterested game than she would ever be.

"I told him that I'm in love with you," she said finally.

**The Confession: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

Tohru's body gave a convulsive jerk, and he was suddenly standing up much straighter, staring at her out of disbelieving eyes. For just a second there was a flicker of hope in those eyes, and Minako had to stifle the urge to go to him immediately.

"No way," he breathed, running one hand nervously through his hair, his fingers twitching. "No, because…you said you were sorry."

Minako wasn't sure what he was talking about. "I said…what?" she asked.

"That one time," insisted Tohru hastily. "When you came in here saying some shit about me wanting you to be happy, you…you said you were sorry, like you couldn't…you didn't have what I wanted. I thought…uh, well, isn't that what I was supposed to think? Weren't you letting me go? I told you to leave, and you-!"

"And I left," finished Minako. "It was too hard for me to watch. I knew I was hurting you. I was sorry that I was hurting you."

Tohru was just staring at her, his mouth partly open as though he was halfway through a though that never made it into words. Minako waited for a moment, then shrugged, trying not to be too disappointed. Her face felt hot as she turned around and ducked back under the caution tape, prepared to go back to where she hoped she'd still find Junpei waiting to walk her home.

Tohru's' hand shot out abruptly and closed on her wrist, pinning her there. "Where the hell are you going?" he asked.

Minako shrugged. "Home," she said. "I'm tired, and it's been a very long day. I said what I came here to say, didn't I? If you've decided that you don't feel the same way anymore, then I-!"

Tohru exhaled sharply, shaking his head. "The hell…" he muttered. Then he stepped over the tape with one quick stride and caught her against him with one arm while he pressed the fingers of the other hand to her face, and closed in for the kiss. Minako shut her eyes and relaxed in the warmth of that moment just briefly, before disentangling her lips from his long enough to get a few words in.

"Tohru?" she asked.,

"What?" he mumbled.

He tried to kiss her again, but she pushed away from him, crossing her arms over her chest and watching the suddenly uncertain look in his eyes.

"Don't you have something for me, too?" she asked him. "It's not fair any other way."

Tohru swallowed anxiously again, and Minako was partially delighted and partially alarmed to see his face suddenly flush darker in his awkward discomfiture.

"L-love you," he muttered desperately.

Minako raised an eyebrow. "Sorry?" she asked.

Tohru took a deep breath, then shook his head and twined his fingers into her hair, resting his forehead against hers. "I…I love you," he stammered into her hair. "I love you. I love you. I…whoa, I have not said that in a really long time. It feels pretty fucked up, uh, in a good way, maybe. That doesn't make any sense, um…crap." He gritted his teeth, looking frustrated.

Minako felt like giggling. It was a very good thing, she decided, that she managed to contain it. It seemed so amazing and a little disturbing how completely different he was now than he had been only moments before. She'd never really be able to get used to that, even if she was peripherally aware of just how dichotomous the two sides of Tohru would always be. He was somehow a malicious, snarky pain in the ass and a fourteen year old lovesick schoolboy at the same time…not, she reflected, that those two things were really all that different, in the end.

"I should go," she informed him.

He looked instantly panicked. "Wait," he said, "why? What did I do wrong? You didn't like it? Jeez, I don't how else to say it…"

"Didn't like what?" asked Minako.

"You know," mumbled Adachi. "What I said. Aw man, I should be better at this, it's not like I've never been with a girl before, or anything…uh, whoa, that was definitely the wrong thing to say there. Yup, that was bad. Gah."

He made as if to turn back towards the wall, but Minako linked her fingers through his and drew him back to her.

"I liked it," she promised him. "Really. It's just that I'm tired, and Junpei's waiting for me."

His eyes narrowed at the mention of Junpei. "Who the fuck cares?" he muttered. "So make him wait. What the hell is up with you and Junpei anyway?"

Once upon a time, Minako would have gotten angry about that. Now, though, things were different. She'd gotten that question so many times from so many different people, both friends and ex-boyfriends that she was more than a little used to coming up with an answer.

"We're not together," she informed Tohru simply. "We never have been and we never will be. But I'm keeping him waiting and that's rude. Besides, if I don't show up soon he'll probably come after both of us with a sword."

"Cute," growled Tohru.

"Don't be jealous," cautioned Minako.

He snorted. "I'm gonna be jealous as hell," he informed her. "You run around with horny guys all the time…and you're my girl, now. So…there it is." He bit his lip, looking wary again. "I mean, it's insane, and fucked up, and you're probably a masochist, but…you're mine and I'm sure as hell not giving that up without a fight. So…"

Minako leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth. He tried to catch her for another real kiss, but she evaded him.

"Goodnight, Tohru," she said.

"Fuck," he mumbled. "Curfew. Velvet Room. Fuck it all."

Again, she forced herself not to laugh. "I'll come back tomorrow. I promise. I just need some sleep, please."

As she passed back towards the way out of Tohru's mind, the voices continued to taunt and tease her. She recognized most of them now, from the time that Tohru had dragged her here to try and make a point about who he really was. There was Dojima-san's voice, and the voice of Tohru's former boss, and then the voice of his mother and the horrible playground children.

There was another voice, too, a cold, feminine voice that Minako recognized now as that of Hinata, Tohru's former fiancée.

"I'll be fine," she was saying, "and you have work to do." Then came the sound of a door slamming, and then a younger, softer Tohru muttered the same words that Minako had heard come out of his older counterpart's lips only moments before she walked away.

"I love you too…" said the younger Tohru, as Minako listened to what was presumably the sound of Hinata's car driving off.

Minako turned around to see Tohru still standing there, watching her.

"I love you," she told him.

"Yeah," he whispered, looking a little relieved. "Yeah. You too."

**Fin.**

**Team**

**Thirteenth Story: Team**

**Summary: **Junpei gives a lecture to somebody he thought he was just starting to respect. There's an extent to which they really all are on the same team, even if he's the only one that's figured that out yet. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Junpei, Naoto.

The day after all that insane crap had gone down in the Velvet Room, and Minako had nearly solved all of their problems, sort of, by killing Yosuke, Junpei went for a walk. It was already pretty late in the day by the time he left, and he had to call in to Daidara's to make up some excuse about being sick and not being able to pull himself out of bed for work. It wasn't the kind of thing he normally did. Sure, Junpei didn't exactly have the most enviable work ethic in all of Inaba, or anything, but he generally showed up and did his job the same as any other guy, mostly because working for Daidara helped him keep from being hungry, and because it wasn't a hard enough job that he couldn't zone out and daydream about the stuff he really wanted to be doing most of the time.

Today, though, he didn't have it in him. The worst was over, the crisis had been averted, and he, Junpei Iori, had kind of been a hero in a little way, which was good enough for a Friday. Right now, what he needed more than anything was a break, and maybe a couple of videogames or a chance to whack at something with his sword until he felt a little more relaxed about the world at large.

Having told Old Man Daidara that he was feeling like shit, Junpei knew that he probably shouldn't wander through more populated parts of town, but he went over to Junes anyway. He was hungry, the fridge was empty, and besides, if Junpei wasn't in the shop, then Daidara would have to stick to lurking around behind the desk and probably wouldn't make it out to see him, anyway.

One person who did see him, though, was Naoto Shirogane. She was sitting in the food court, reading the newspaper, or something like that, and when Junpei walked by, she looked up quickly and then instantly looked away again, like she was trying to pretend their eyes hadn't met. Junpei wasn't fooled. He wasn't much of a fan of the way people took stuff out in public to read, anyway. If she was sitting out in the middle of a public place, he reasoned with himself, then she was gonna have to deal with some social stuff.

"Hey," he said, grabbing a chair and pulling it up next to Naoto's table.

Naoto eyed him coldly. "Good afternoon," she murmured, in a way that made it very clear, even to blunt and socially inept Junpei that she wasn't in the mood for conversation. He soldiered on anyway.

"Nice job yesterday," he told her. "I mean, hey, you were a huge help. You kinda saved the day, huh? Thanks. Dunno what I would have done if you weren't there. Coulda gotten pretty ugly."

Naoto dropped her paper on to the table, and gave him a withering look. "It seems strange, does it not, that you should be thanking me for standing up against an ally of yours? There is something perverse about it…much like the rest of what went on in the Velvet Room during yesterday's fiasco."

"Hey, here's an idea. How about you say something like, uh, 'you're welcome?'" suggested Junpei.

Naoto shook her head and pursed her lips. "As I have just made very clear, there is nothing whatsoever for you to be thanking me for. Although there may have been some discussion between us as to the correct and best advised course of action, it is not as though we have joined forces towards a common goal. Your leader assaulted my leader. My leader was forced to defend himself, and I protected him. Had it not been for the reconciliation facilitated between them by the timely arrival of Yu Narukami, we would still to all intents and purposes be on opposing sides of the board. Now," she added, picking up her newspaper again and pointedly standing it up between them, "if you will excuse me."

Junpei snorted. "I will not excuse you, jeez," he muttered. "Hey, aren't you supposed to be some kind of big-name, hotshot detective? How come you're so damn stupid about this, huh?"

"Stupid?" squeaked Naoto, slamming the paper back down on to the table and glaring at him. "Forgive me for being perhaps overly blunt, but you hardly seem the correct individual to be throwing around offensive terms about my or anyone else's level of intelligence!"

Junpei had to think about that one for a moment. When he parsed it through, he realized that she was calling him an idiot, but it wasn't the first time that had happened, and it probably wouldn't be the last. Even Minako got on his case for making stupid decisions now and then, so it didn't phase him too much anymore. Besides, he was right, and he knew it. That helped.

"You just don't get it," Junpei informed her. "Anyway, not like it's my job to force you to think anything, I'm just saying I think you're pretty cool. You're a good ally to have in a fight, okay? So I'm thanking you. There. Done. We good?"

Naoto was biting her lip, shaking her head more to herself than in response to anything Junpei had said. "Your logic puzzles me," she admitted. "We have pitted our strength against each other, stood facing each other on the field of combat, and yet you call us allies. I don't…"

"No," agreed Junpei, "you definitely don't, huh? Hey, I don't get you. First you go talking yesterday, all about how alliance is important to you, and you 'treasure' the way we all work together, and that stuff…and now this. What's up with that? What do you think we're even trying to do, here? You wanna mend some bridges? So do I. I've had enough of this fighting and picking on each other, it's a pain in the ass and it's getting on my case. You started to stop it, that's a good thing."

"I raised my hand against your leader," Naoto reminded him. "At your request, by the way...does that not sting a bit, when you think about it? That you willed me to stand against the woman who is, essentially, your partner in all of this?"

Junpei shook his head. "Sting? Uh, nope, not even a little bit."

Naoto stared at him in some surprise. Junpei sighed.

"Look," he said. "You think she really wanted to kill him? That crazy Adachi guy was right, it never would have made her happy…wouldn't have made anybody happy. She panicked, she freaked out, that's all that was. That's why we have buddies, okay? So they can get in the way and tell us to shut up and fuck off when it turns out that we're about to do something we're gonna regret. That's what it is, that's what's important, I guess. That's what those precious "alliances" are that you were droning on about are, right? So? You stopped her from doing something that was gonna make her miserable, and you helped me do it, too. You got in the way and you stopped both of us from making a mess of this whole thing, even if that looked like what we were trying to do. So, thanks. Thanks for being on our team. That's all I got, okay?"

There wasn't really anything else to say, so Junpei stood up and left the table, muttering to himself under his breath about how some people just didn't get it, any of it.

Just as he was about to open the gate and make tracks back to his house, however, he heard Naoto say something at his back.

"You're welcome," she murmured, just loud enough that Junpei could catch it. "And also, thank you. At least, I think so."

**Mend**

**Fourteenth Story: Mend**

**Summary: **Yosuke had been hoping for a reprieve when Yu showed up. It was pretty clear that Yu wasn't going to be happy, but partners were supposed to stick by each other. Turns out he wasn't the only one who needed the backup. One-shot.

**Character Focus: **Yu, Yosuke.

While Minako lay passed out on the floor, and Junpei leaned over her, arguing with Igor, Naoto, Yu, and Yosuke found themselves a quiet corner of the room in which to compare notes.

"From the beginning," instructed Yu quietly, obviously undecided as to whether or not he should be pissed off, confused, worried, or a combination of all there. "Naoto, please. What's going on, here?"

"Huh?" Yosuke, whose arm was aching a little from the one blow he hadn't managed to block or dodge, frowned. "Why her? I'm the one with the injury, I'm the one who-!"

Yu raised an eyebrow at him, and Yosuke, plenty used to that dubious look, fell instantly silent. "Naoto's better at explaining things," Yu informed him simply.

Yosuke couldn't argue with that. It was true.

Naoto didn't look much happier about it than Yosuke did, but she nodded, took a slow, calming breath, and then began. "I am afraid that I am only familiar with certain parts of the story," she said. "I entered the Velvet Room perhaps twenty minutes ago, perhaps fewer, to find Yosuke-senpai and Junpei-san engaged in a heated argument, which resulted, it seems, in the exchange of blows."

"Blows?" asked Yu, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean? He hit you, Yosuke?"

Yosuke had the uncomfortable impression that he was back on the playground in elementary school, being interrogated by that one kind but firm teacher who every little kid hated to love. Come to think of it, he got the same feeling when talking to Nanako, a lot. They really did have a lot in common in that family.

"No, not quite," murmured Naoto. "It appears that Yosuke-senpai was engaged in a sort of combat with Adachi-san, before Junpei-san attempted an intervention…to which Yosuke-senpai responded with blows. I attempted to speak up on Junpei-san's behalf, but the opportunity was lost, for Minako came upon the scene and…apparently misinterpreted the proceedings in a manner that I am as of yet unable to completely understand."

Yosuke knew it was coming before it happened. He was a man, he had to own up to this. He wasn't ashamed of it, not for a second, and so he forced himself to meet Yu's eyes as Yu gave him the distinctly disappointed look that the whole Dojima clan seemed to have in constant supply. Then, he reached out and grabbed Yosuke by the arm, dragging him away from Naoto and towards the door that led back into the TV world.

"Hey, yikes!" protested Yosuke. "What's with the-!"

"Come on," grumbled Yu, pulling the door open. Naoto, much to Yosuke's distress, didn't follow them.

Out in the TV world, they were alone, which was kind of a relief. "Look, man," began Yosuke. "I'm not sorry about it, so don't start. She came after me! She's the crazy one here, all I did was-!"

"Shut up," muttered Yu.

Yosuke's mouth fell open. "Wha…what did you say to me?"

"I told you to shut up," clarified Yu, sighing. "What the hell were you thinking, Yosuke? I figured you had this under control, I wasn't expecting you to freak out and lose your cool like this, this is…I mean, and it's embarrassing."

Yosuke wasn't sure what to say to that Yu Narukami was the last person in the world that Yosuke had ever expected to take Minako's side. It hurt in a way that nothing else really did, like his last bastion of support had just given out on him and he was really, genuinely alone in this thing for the very first time.

"Whatever," he mumbled. "Wow, this is…kind of unexpected. Hey, I thought we were partners. I figured you'd have my back."

Yu took a deep breath. "Don't be an idiot," he muttered. "Of course I have your back. Why else would I show up like this in the middle of the school week?"

"We're supposed to be partners" Yosuke went on, shaking his head. "Everything's messed up, here. I needed you to-!"

"I needed you to have _my_ back," announced Yu, grabbing Yosuke by the shoulders. "I was counting on you! Wasn't that obvious? Partners, yeah, we are. That means we're equals, right? We're on the same page? I needed you to hold down the fort while I was gone, that's what I was counting on you, for. Now we've got this, instead."

Yosuke shook his head belligerently. "You're the damn leader," he reminded Yu. "Everybody looks up to you, everybody expects you to keep it together, that's what-!"

"Yeah, that's what the leader does," agreed Yu, cutting him off. "What, did you fall asleep or something all those months ago, when we agreed that you were the new leader? You're the guy, now, okay? You're that guy, the one who has to have his shit together and keep everybody else in line. They've spent years following you, figuring out what you need, listening to your orders."

"I give crappy orders," muttered Yosuke.

Yu raised an eyebrow. "Well, you sure did this time," he agreed. That didn't make Yosuke feel any better.

They stood across from each other in silence for a moment, while Yu frowned, apparently trying to sort something out behind his eyes. Yosuke stared at the floor, wondering if he was angrier or more disappointed at the moment. Or guilty. Yeah, there was a lot of guilt there, too.

"Look," said Yu finally, with a little less frustration in his tone. "I know how angry you are. I know what it all means to you. You're not wrong, Yosuke. It's never wrong to feel something about another person, right? That can't be, not when it's not something we can control. But listen, I don't care if you never want to talk to her or look at her again, that's fine with me. You're a grown guy, it's your decision, who cares? You need to make a decision, though. You need to figure your stuff out, because there are other people counting on you and looking to you to figure out how they're supposed to feel. That's what leadership is. You're my partner, right? You really want to be partners in this?"

Yosuke nodded. "Course," he said. "That's…I mean, that's the way it's always been, right? You and me, versus the world." That was the last of what still made sense in Yosuke's head.

"Then if we're gonna be partners in this, I need you to be part of a leader for me," said Yu quietly. "Stop making trouble, stop acting like a pissed off little kid, and start putting this mess back together, because at some point we are gonna want to have something to come home to, and it took a lot for us to turn this place into a home to begin with. We started this partnership to make the world a better place, right? So let's not give up on it now."

Yosuke bit his lip. "Sorry, man," he muttered. "I'm just…I can't do it. I'm a bad leader, I always have been. I haven't got whatever it…whatever you have, it's just not part of me. Nothing I can do about that, it's the way it is."

Yu's hand came down on Yosuke's shoulder in a clap of encouragement. "No," he said, "No, I'm the bad leader. "I've been distracted, I haven't been paying attention. There's…no excuse for that, I guess. Sorry. I should have stuck around, should have checked in more often. Maybe I knew this wasn't going to clear itself up if we ignored it, but…I'm tired." He laughed. "I can't say that to anybody else, but I'm tired. You're probably tired too, huh?"

For some reason, Yosuke didn't want to agree to that. There was a built-in part of him that saw Yu sagging under the weight of whatever, and was instantly prepared to tell them it was cool, that Yosuke had it all under control, that it was gonna be fine and Yu should just go take a break and finish up with school, like nothing had happened to get in the way.

"Partners, right?" asked Yu.

"Yeah," agreed Yosuke, nodding.

"Okay." Yu sighed. "So, two shitty leaders, huh? Maybe we can partner up and be one better leader. What do you say?"

Yosuke rallied himself to give Yu a manly little punch on the arm. He regretted it moments later, when Yu returned the gesture on Yosuke's injured arm.

"Agh," grunted Yosuke,.

Yu's eyes widened. "Oh, no, hey, uh…are you okay? Wait, here." Yu rummaged in his pocket, and pulled out a bandage that looked really familiar to Yosuke, like the kind that he'd used to carry around himself back in high school.

"Hey," said Yosuke. "I gave you that, right? After our first fight. Seriously, you still have that thing? Have you used it? That's..that's pretty gross."

"Shut up and put it on," instructed Yu. "Then we have to figure out what to do about the rest of them. You probably shouldn't go in there and face Junpei alone, he's got a real temper and if he hits you again, I'm not gonna stop you from showing him what a bad idea that was. Don't tell anybody I said that, though."

They walked back towards the door, and just as they were on the threshold, Yosuke glanced over at his friend.

"What about Minako?" he asked.

Yu shrugged. "I wasn't there. That one's up to you. Don't beat her up, that won't solve anything, okay? But the rest's not for me to decide. It's your fight."

"But you'll have my back," Yosuke reminded him. "Hey, I wonder which of you would win in a fight. Okay, she's pretty powerful, but you used to be a wild card too, right? You're kind of a big deal, so maybe…"

"Obviously I have your back," said Yu. "Let's…try not to have it come to that, though, okay?"

They crossed back into the Velvet Room together.

**Fin.**

**Casanova: Chapter One**

**Author's Note: **This one was so difficult to write! Ugh, Adachi, why must you torment me and make it so hard to write about you? Ugh, talk about masochism…anyway, I'm out. Tomorrow, Dojima, Yu, Naoto, and all the rest of the good stuff. Phew.

**Fifteenth Story: Casanova**

**Summary: **Selfish, insecure Tohru Adachi is not exactly the world's greatest lover, not by a long shot. There are demons between him and Minako that can't be so easily exercised. Still, love is a patient creature. WARNING: Sexual content, read at your own risk.

**Character Focus: **Minako, Adachi.

**Chapter One**

Exactly like she'd promised, Minako hurried back to the Velvet Room the day after her ill advised showdown with Yosuke. Igor was there, of course, looking even more beleaguered and long-suffering than usual, probably because of the way Tohru shot out of his chair the moment he heard the door open. Minako smiled. Poor Tohru had probably been on edge all night, which would be enough to make him chatty and difficult, and to fray pretty easily at even steady, unflappable Igor's nerves.

"Hi there," said Tohru. He made as if to reach for her, but Minako shook her head very slightly, and he stopped, frowning in confusion. She shot a significant glance at Igor. Igor did not quite roll his eyes, but there was something almost like exasperation in his usually so unreadable face.

"I'd like to take him out for a little while," Minako told Igor. "If that's all right. I promise I won't lose him, or let him do anything wrong."

Tohru looked disappointed. "Wait, really? Um…define 'wrong' for me. Because, I mean, you're what, seventeen? So, uh, depending on how you look at it…"

Minako ignored him. "I know Nanako's not here," she told Igor. "I'll have to vouch for him in her absence. I think she'd be all right with that."

Igor gave Tohru a long, tired look.

"Master," mumbled Tohru miserably, throwing a quick look at Minako as though hoping she hadn't heard that part. "Come on, cut a guy a break…"

Waving one hand dismissively at both of them, Igor turned around in his chair. "Very well, the responsibility is yours. Just…please, take him out of here," he instructed Minako.

Minako took Tohru by the hand, and led him back into the TV world.

Tohru had to help her find the exit that would bring them both back through the TV in her living room. Almost the moment their feet touched down on the living room carpet, Tohru pulled Minako into his arms and was kissing her greedily, his hands pressed hard against the bare place where sweater met skirt at her lower back. They stumbled together back against the nearest wall, and as his tongue pushed insistently into her mouth she reached up and wrapped both arms around his neck, her fingers brushing against tendrils of hair that were getting a little too long in light of a recent lack of personal grooming.

He released her lips for a moment and laughed under his breath. "Don't do that," he muttered. "Tickles. Not fair."

"You need a haircut," she informed him, dutifully changing her grip to keep out of tickling range. He started kissing her again, and for a moment, she closed her eyes and just enjoyed how good that felt, especially after she'd been trying not to daydream about it for weeks. Then she reached up and began loosening his ever-present tie.

She felt his hands suddenly tighten convulsively on her waist as she removed the tie. He inhaled sharply against her lips, and then abruptly released her and pulled away, shaking his head a little breathlessly. "Wh-whoa, hey, hang on a second, uh…"

Minako raised an eyebrow in surprise. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he assured her quickly, grinning nervously and running an uncomfortable hand through his hair. "There is definitely nothing wrong right now...nope. Not a thing. It's just that, um…" he faltered and bit his lip, apparently at a loss.

Minako had a feeling that she knew what this was. This wouldn't be the first time, of course, that they'd…well, been intimate with each other, but she distinctly remembered something similar happening between her and Shinjiro when she'd first come back from the Seal. Shinjiro had been reluctant to be with her as well. "No, its okay," she promised him. "I understand. You want to take things slower, now? You know, so that we can savor the relationship?"

Tohru's eyes almost bulged out of his head. "What the hell? No, uh, see, that's…that's definitely not my style. Kinda late, anyway, for taking it slow, don't you think?"

Minako couldn't really argue with that. Now, however, she was out of her depth. "Then what's the problem?"

"Uh…" if anything, Tohru looked even more miserable now than he had when she'd found him in the Velvet Room. There were beads of sweat collecting on his forehead as he looked at anything that wasn't Minako. "Well, I guess it's a little different now, than it was before," he managed eventually. "You know what I mean?"

"No," admitted Minako. "I have no idea what you mean." She didn't know, she thought, unless it had something to do with what they'd said to each other the day before, in the TV world. It made a difference to her, she had to admit, but somehow she couldn't quite see that making a huge difference to Tohru, who was pretty obviously ready to have her right here and now, if it weren't for these uncharacteristic and mysterious misgivings.

"Jeez," mumbled Tohru. "Wow this is embarrassing, uh…look. Before, you were blind. You know, it's not like you were looking at me while we…uh, while we did it. Now you're not. You can see, and that's great! Probably will make some stuff a little less complicated to pull off, granted, but uh…you know, it's not like I'm a real Casanova or anything, right? I mean, pressure's on, now."

Minako blinked at him. "You're…you're uncomfortable with my seeing you?"

Tohru didn't answer that directly. Instead, he asked another question. "Hey, is it true that you used to sleep with a professional boxer?"

"Where," asked Minako, starting to get a little annoyed, "did you hear that? And why does it matter? Yes, Akihiko is a professional boxer, and I really prefer the term 'date' rather than 'sleep with' if that's all the same to you."

"Right, sure," muttered Tohru dismissively, obviously not putting too much serious stock in any of that. "Hell, I bet he had insane muscles. Hey, can I ask you something?"

Minako waited, somewhat impatiently.

"When you first started to see again," continued Tohru, now definitely not even trying to look Minako in the eye, "what'd you think? Of me, I mean. I mean…was it what you expected?"

"You were soaked in blood," remarked Minako dryly. "Remember? So no, I certainly hope it wasn't what I-!"

"Come on, work with me," insisted Tohru. "You probably had some image in your head, I mean…that's how it works, right? That's what you told me, anyway. So, how bad was it, when you saw the real thing?"

Minako gave up. He had, she realized, seriously been worrying about this. She had, of course, seen him twice before; once in the prison, and the second time when he'd killed her attacker at the train station. The second time he'd been covered with blood, too, so she decided not to bring that up. She also decided not to tell him that she was surprised by just how much he was acting like a teenage girl at the moment. It was, quite honestly, kind of endearing, the way he was showing her this particularly awkward vulnerability. It was like the way he ran his hand through his hair when he was nervous. She liked it, mostly because it was a part of him that she hadn't seen until recently, and it helped put together the bigger picture of a person.

"I'm going upstairs," she informed him, walking past him towards the staircase.

Tohru looked uncertain. "Am I coming with you?" he asked.

"Yes," said Minako. "You are."

"Oh," mumbled Tohru. "Okay, well, that's good."

**Casanova: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

They climbed the stairs together, and Minako pulled open the door to her bedroom. "I'm getting a TV installed in here, by the way," she told him. She wasn't looking at him, but could still hear the startled little choking noise that came out of him, which gave her just a hint of malicious pleasure that she didn't spend too long bothering to be ashamed of.

Tohru paused on the threshold, and Minako had to take him by the hand and bring him into the room. She sat him down on the bed, then closed the door and perched herself on his lap. For some reason, Tohru laughed under his breath again.

"What?" asked Minako.

He shook his head." You kinda like torturing me, don't you? No, don't lie, you're into that. You get off on it, a little."

Minako felt herself blushing."No, I…" she began uncertainly.

Tohru shrugged. "Nah, forget it. You won't hear me complaining. Much. Maybe you and I aren't so different in the end, huh?"

He grinned at her, and Minako, unsure how to even begin responding to that, opted to stick with her original game plan. She leaned in and kissed him, very slowly, resisting his attempts to pull her back on to the bed. After a moment, she felt his breathing change, and he hoisted her by the waist, shifting her a little farther up on his lap.

"Shit, you…uh, words…mmph," he mumbled incoherently as she began working on the buttons of his shirt. As soon as she had it off, he grabbed the hem of her sweater and tugged it over her head, dropping it carelessly as his fingers sought the hook of her bra.

"Bad at this part," he warned her breathlessly. "Whoever the fuck designed these things, I don't…jeez."

He wasn't wrong about that. His movements were clumsy and way too rushed to get a handle on the little details like a hook and eye, but eventually the thing did come off, and this time he did manage to pull Minako on top of him as he fell back on to the bed. The skin to skin contact was exhilarating, and Minako's heart was beating much faster as she twined her arms around his body and let him roll her over until he had the upper hand. She could feel his pulse pounding through his chest, and she arched her neck as his lips buried themselves in her collarbone.

"M-Minako," he groaned, apparently uncertain where to put his hands, which were now trying their hardest to be everywhere at the same time. He was somehow trying to shove her skirt towards her feet and fumble with the zipper on his pants in the same moment, which was a multi-handed process that there just weren't enough fingers for. Things were moving a little faster now, and Minako tried to kiss him again, but discovered that he'd lost interest in her mouth. When she managed to look into his face, she was alarmed by the hungry, desperate look in his eyes, eyes that were suddenly more the eyes of the killer than they were of the real person she'd been teasing and talking to moments before.

Unwillingly, she remembered the way that Shadow Adachi had looked at her when she and Tohru had confronted him in the Velvet Room. There had been that same hungry anger on his face then when he'd told her, "Do you know what I think about when I look at you? I think about those women I tried to rape, about the looks on their faces. Sometimes I fantasize about what you might look like if I just got the chance to-!"

Tohru grabbed her roughly by the hips and pulled her beneath him. His fingers pushing hard into her skin. It hurt. "Ow," she whispered, "Tohru…" He didn't seem to hear her.

"Tohru," she murmured, unsure if she was reaching him or not. "It's okay, I'm not…I love you."

There was a moment's pause, and then Tohru shuddered, swallowed hard, and laid Minako gently back down on the bed. When she looked into his face this time it was the uncertain face of the man who'd been afraid that she wouldn't like him because he didn't have abs like an athlete. She liked that man much better. Without meaning to, she breathed out a little sigh of relief, and then saw the twist of pain on Tohru's face, and wished she hadn't.

"You're hurting me," she told him, trying not to make it too much of an accusation.

"S-sorry," whispered Tohru, looking like he might be sick. "I…" He brushed his fingers along the place on her hip that was now marked with angry red blotches from the insistent pressure of his fingertips. Turning away from her again, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and started pulling his pants back on as quickly as he could. He didn't even bother with shirt or shoes, but stood up and left the bedroom as soon as he'd finished the zipper. Minako had to find a couple of articles of clothing at least before she was able to follow him.

By the time she caught up with him, he was already standing outside the TV in the living room.

"Wait, Tohru," she insisted.

Tohru just shook his head. "I hurt you," he muttered.

"It wasn't that bad," Minako assured him. "I'm fine."

"Yeah?" He turned on her, looking frantically miserable. "Well, it could have been a lot worse. You said in the Velvet Room that you get what I really am, but you don't get it…I'm a sack of shit, I'm messed up, I…I don't know who the fuck I think I'm kidding," he snarled. "You, apparently…dumbass."

This wasn't, of course, the first time they'd had a conversation like this. Minako had recognized long ago that it was hard for her to combat honesty like that. She couldn't tell him she hadn't been frightened, or that it hadn't been disturbing, because she had been, and it was. Instead, Minako fell back on the old faithful of pragmatism.

"You can't go back there without a shirt," she reminded him. "Igor will give you such a look."

"Heh," muttered Tohru.

Minako waited a beat. "So?" she asked. "Go get it."

"You go get it," grumbled Tohru.

Minako planted both hands on her hips and gave him her very best offended feminine glare. "I don't think so," she informed him coolly. "This is my house and I am not a servant in it. You will get your own damn shirt." She turned around and made a big deal of flouncing back up the stairs. Behind her, she heard Tohru snort a laugh.

A few minutes later he joined her in the bedroom, and sat hesitantly back down on the bed to button his shirt back up.

"You should stay," she told him, watching his back from the other side of the bed.

"No way," retorted Tohru. "The ploy to get me back into the bedroom was cute…maybe even kinda hot, don't get me wrong, but…nah, I don't think I can touch you again right now. Fuck, I mean…but, you wouldn't want me to, right?"

"We'll go downstairs," interrupted Minako. "I'll make tea."

For a moment, he looked as though he was going to shut her down. Then his shoulders sagged, and Minako crawled over the bed to wrap her arms around his back. He sighed.

"Sure, fine, why the hell not," he muttered. "Tea. Yeah."

Minako made as though to get up, but Tohru shook his head. "In a minute," he said. "Just, uh…you know, let's hang out here for a bit."

Minako nodded. "Okay," she agreed.

**Casanova: Chapter Three**

**Chapter Three**

They did eventually wander back into the living room, and Minako dutifully began brewing tea, if only because it was something to occupy her while Tohru sat on the sofa and stared blankly at the wall.

"Where'd my tie end up?" he asked eventually.

Minako retrieved it from where she'd dropped it underneath the TV set. "Why do you even wear this?" she asked, walking over and handing it to him. "You're not a detective anymore, so the suit really is a little much. Besides, don't the Velvet Room attendants usually wear blue?"

"You didn't seriously think I was gonna wear that thing, did you?" asked Tohru, shaking his head. "Hell, maybe I'm no Akihiki, or whatever the fuck his name is, but a guy's gotta have personal standards. Besides, you said it yourself, the tie's a good look for me. 'Snappy dresser,' I think's what you said."

Minako had to think really hard about that one. "You…do know that I said that when I was blind, right?" she asked eventually, suddenly realizing that he was talking about a comment she'd made over a year ago, when she'd first been getting to know him…sort of. "Not that I was wrong," she added hastily, wary of what was beginning to look like an unexpectedly fragile ego. "It just seems a bit strange, that's all. Maybe a change would feel good."

"Yeah, I dunno," he muttered bitterly. "Maybe I have to be a miserable prisoner of that Velvet Room shithole, but I don't have to look like one. It's not in the damn 'contract.'" He waited a moment, then shrugged. "Besides, everything around here's gone to hell…half of it never makes any sense. Gotta stick to something familiar, or we'll all go nuts. Not that we aren't...pretty much there already." He laughed unhappily.

Minako abandoned the tea, and came over to sit down next to him on the sofa, giving him a little kiss on the cheek as she sat down. He smiled, but didn't otherwise move to accommodate her.

"What," she asked teasingly. "No stretch?"

"Huh?" he looked confused.

"You know," insisted Minako, reaching her arms up over her head by way of demonstration. "That thing where you pretend to stretch like you're really tired, just so you can get an arm around me."

"Oh, uh, that." Tohru laughed. "Yeah, uh…I guess I did do that, that one time. Not exactly the smoothest of romantic moves, but you have this way of making me forget all the rules and just panic. Oh, well."

"It was funny," Minako assured him. "Do it again."

Tohru gave her an odd look, but eventually he did stretch his arms out until he had one of them around her shoulders. Minako snuggled closer to him on the sofa.

"Heh, you're a tease," he told her.

"I am not," she protested.

Tohru raised an eyebrow at her. "Yeah, you are," he insisted. "Wasn't the whole point of coming down here to try to cool me down? How am I supposed to do that when you're getting all close and personal, here? Might be asking too much of a guy."

"You're the one who wanted to cool down," Minako reminded him. "I had nothing to do with that. Besides, I don't care. You're going to have to deal with it. We are going to sit on the couch, and you are going to hold me, and the tea is probably going to get cold, and we are going to maybe watch a movie or something. If you don't, I'm going to call Junpei and ask him if he wants to go out to a movie, because at least then I won't be bored, and he's very good company." She added just a little hint of teasing to those last few words, emphasizing the "very" just enough to get Tohru's hackles up. It worked. He gritted his teeth for a moment, and squeezed her a little bit closer to him on the couch.

"You're not going anywhere," he informed her.

Minako pretended to sigh with disappointment. "Oh, dear," she murmured, in her best impression of a damsel in distress. "Whatever shall I do?"

This time, when Tohru laughed, it sounded like he meant it.

**Fin.**

**Kingdom Come: Chapter One**

**Author's Note: **This is not what I was supposed to be writing this evening. As a matter of fact, I have a Dojima story and a YosukexNaoto story that need to be finished and included in this collection. I started scribbling this one in my notebook on the way home, and I've gotta ask you to bear with me this one time, since I guess this is the product of spontaneous inspiration.

Also, blame **der kapitan. **The incredible, heartbreaking ending of **Twenty Five Hours** did a lot to inspire the basics of this.

**Sixteenth Story: Kingdom Come**

**Summary: **Sometimes, it feels like a fantasy. At other times, it's all too real.

**Character Focus: **Yu, Minako.

**Chapter One**

Minako woke up in the middle of the night, feeling strange and unsettled. She'd been having a nightmare, she knew, and that wasn't at all uncommon. The strange thing was that whatever she'd been dreaming about hadn't felt like one of her nightmares. She couldn't quite put her finger on it or even really remember much of the dream, but something about it had been detached and distant, like watching a movie or seeing a play. There had been none of her in that dream at all.

Getting out of bed, she threw a robe on over her pajamas. The new TV she'd just had installed in her bedroom made this sort of thing a lot easier, and Minako yawned, sniffled, rubbed at one sleepy eye with the back of her hand, and then stepped through the screen and into the TV world.

It was only when she got to the Velvet Room that Minako realized what her sleep deprived mind had decided to overlook. Tohru was lounging in his chair, his arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His eyes were half glazed over, and he was obviously daydreaming. He sat up pretty quickly, however, when he caught sight of Minako out of the corner of his eye.

"Oh, hey," he said. "What, did you miss me so badly you couldn't sleep, or something? Not that I'm complaining." He grinned at her, and Minako suddenly wondered what kind of horrible mess her hair was in. Not that they hadn't seen each other in various states of undress before, but it probably wouldn't have killed her to try a little harder, or at least to wash her face before she'd come in.

"Is there someone in there?" she asked, pointing to the door that led into her nightmare world.

Tohru nodded. "Yep. How'd you know? Actually it's weird, it's like he never comes in here. I was kinda starting to enjoy that…" he sighed. "You know, I think he gets more and more like his self righteous pain in the ass of an uncle every day? How the hell you manage to put up with it I can't figure out…"

"Excuse me," murmured Minako, stepping past him and over to the door.

Tohru grabbed her by the arm. "Wait, whoa! You're going in there by yourself? Uh, does that really seem like a good idea to you? There are shadows, and…hang on, I'll come with you. Not like I have anything better to do."

Minako could see how bored Tohru obviously was, and knew how much he must be aching for a bit of action. She did feel badly about abandoning him to that, but at the same time she wasn't sure that it would be a good idea to bring him into her nightmares and let him listen to the sound of his own laughter echoing around in her dreams. It probably wouldn't make him feel any better about them being lovers, and Minako wasn't awake enough to deal with brooding, nihilistic Tohru just then.

"No, it's okay," she assured him. "Thank you, but, I'll be fine."

Tohru looked surprised, and definitely disappointed. "Um…really? What's so important in there that you can't take me with you, huh? Come on, I'm dying out here, give me a break, I'm-!"

"Sorry, Tohru," whispered Minako. She pulled open the door and stepped over the threshold into the midst of her nightmares.

Except, of course, that these didn't seem to be entirely Minako's nightmares. The room was dark; almost pitch black in exactly the same way that it had been when she and the rest of SEES had gone exploring a few days before. She could hear the sounds of Tohru's crazed laughter and see the places on the wall that were stained with what looked horribly like splatters of blood. There were other images too, though, new ones that didn't belong in Minako's most terrifying dreams. There were oversized shadows that looked like rabbits hopping around, and the sound of a little girl crying for her mom. There was an overturned wheelchair as well, which may or may not have been a new kind of shadow, lying on its back with its wheels spinning crazily in the air.

"Messiah," murmured Minako. Something stirred inside the depths of her soul, and then her persona was standing in front of her, calmly watching as a group of rabbit shadows eyed it warily before bouncing off into the depths.

For some reason, her passage through the nightmare room was much easier than it had ever been before. Minako ascribed that phenomenon to the unexpected and capricious nature of the shadow world itself. It didn't take her too long to reach the twisted little replica of the Tartarus tower, and she wasn't surprised at all to see the figure standing at the top.

"Yu!'" she called, mounting the steps with Messiah floating up behind. Yu turned around and smiled apologetically at her.

"Sorry," he said. "Did I wake you?"

Minako shrugged. "Yes, but…its okay. I guess it's only fair that this is your place now, as much as it is mine."

"Yeah…maybe." Yu was frowning thoughtfully at the door that Minako knew led to her own psychological representation of the Seal. Even in Yu's nightmares, Minako was sure, it would be there. That was something that they shared, that they would always share, like it or not. It was, more than metaphorically, a part of them both.

"Nanako asked me something last night," Yu was saying. "About Aunt Chisato. She wanted to know why her Mom didn't come back to life the same way that I did, and if what we could do to bring her back."

Minako winched. "Oh," she said. "Honestly, though, I'm surprised that she's never asked you that before."

"Yeah," agreed Yu. "Me too. Maybe she was afraid to ask…I'm assuming that she already really knows the answer."

"And what is the answer?" asked Minako. "What did you tell her?"

Yu sighed. "That I don't know why it happened, and that I'm sorry. I mean..that's true, isn't it? It's the closest thing to truth that I can give her, anyway. I said that it doesn't work that way; that death is forever and that nothing we do can really bring someone back."

"But we came back," Minako reminded him.

**Kingdom Com: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

"Yeah," said Yu. "I know." He frowned. "Still, it wasn't wrong. I told her the truth. Things like that don't really happen. Not to anyone else, at least. Not to Aunt Chisato, or to Saki Konishi…"

Suddenly, Minako wondered how often Yosuke had considered that very same thing, and if he ever resented Minako for being irrationally alive. He probably did, she realized, and may very well have voiced that much to Yu, who was the sort of person who thought about things very carefully, and took those kind of things deeply to heart. Yosuke would never feel that way about Yu, of course, and neither would Nanako, but…the sentiment was the same, and Yu would get that. Minako couldn't blame Yosuke, or Nanako, or anyone if they did feel that way. In their shoes, she couldn't doubt that she probably would as well. She'd felt that way often about people while watching Shinjiro waste away in the hospital. Why them, and why not him?

"Do you ever feel," Yu asked quietly, "like maybe it isn't real? Like it couldn't be real, because that would be too magical, and too easy?" He shook his head. "Sometimes, I do. I try not to, but…I do. It shouldn't be possible, not even in a world full of shadows and personas, but…it is. Isn't it?"

Minako didn't say anything. She didn't think Yu would have been listening, anyway. He was talking more to himself than to her, with his eyes still fixed on the tower door.

"I want to know what's in there," he told her.

"We know what's in there," Minako reminded him. "We're in there."

"But I want to really know," insisted Yu. "I want to see it. I want to be sure."

Minako nodded. "Me too," she agreed. "Okay. We'll open it together."

For a moment, they both watched the door, neither apparently wanting to be the first person to reach for it. Then Minako wrapped her fingers around the knob, took a deep breath, and pulled.

She had to shield her eyes as the door opened to reveal the swirling, dazzling and ever-changing colors of the Eternity Seal, the seal that was created from detached pieces of both her and Yu's souls.

"It's there," she murmured, even more desperately relieved than she'd expected to be. "Of course it's there, it has to be…"

Then, the voices came. They drifted out of the spinning mass, piling up sound upon sound, one voice on top of another until the air was filled with a cacophony of familiar tones and timbres. Minako, flinching away from the sheer volume of it all, did her best to pick out individual words from the deafening roar.

"As a guest of the Velvet Room," intoned Igor's voice, "you must accept responsibility for your choices. If this mystery is not solved, then your future may be forever lost."

"I can do this," murmured Yukari. "I know I can. I just put it to my head like this, and then I…I pull the trigger."

"No, it's okay," insisted Nanako."I can stay home alone. I'm used to it."

"Hey, don't worry!" said Junpei. "It's cool, I've got your back."

"Just…just try to stay out of trouble, okay?" asked what sounded to Minako like Dojima's best policeman voice.

Minako risked a glance over at Yu, who was now standing rooted to the spot, his mouth slightly open, staring into the swirling abyss.

"Hi," said the voice of Tohru Adachi. "I'm your uncle's gopher. I mean, his partner."

"My dearest," murmured Pharos, or Ryoji, or maybe both.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a gunshot, and Minako shut her eyes involuntarily against the images that rose up in her mind.

"Don't…cry," rasped Shinjiro.

"Big…Bro?" begged Nanako hoarsely. "I'm…scared…"

For a few moments, the voices softened and blended together, to the point where Minako could no longer pick out individual people or phrases.

"You don't get it," muttered Junpei eventually. "You were dead. All that saving the world stuff…it wasn't worth it, anymore. It didn't matter."

"What am I supposed to think?" Dojima was shouting. "Both of my kids are in there fighting these shadow things, and I'm…doing what, exactly? What the hell am I supposed to do, just sit back and watch you let yourselves die?"

"I don't know," mumbled Yosuke. "You're the leader, you've always been the leader. I don't get it, I don't' think I ever made much of a leader."

"Leader," echoed Mitsuru.

"Leader," repeated Yukiko.

"Our leader," said Aigis.

"Leader."

"Leader."

"The leader!"

The voices of their friends and fellow teammates piled in on them, repeating that one word over and over and over again. The word "leader" filled up the whole room, took over every corner and crevice of space that wasn't already full of the memories and visions that Minako was trying desperately to shut out and welcome in at one and the same time. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Yu slowly sinking to his knees on the ground, and she hurried down to him, wrapping her arms around him and doing her best to support him against the onslaught of voices and remembered feelings.

Yu's foot shot out suddenly, and with it he slammed shut the door to the Seal. Instantly, the voices were cut off, the colors faded, and the room was plunged again into blessed, blessed blackness.

Yu and Minako sat on the ground in that welcome silence for a moment, listening to the sound of their own breathing and waiting for the world to spin back around to the reality of the present.

"I'm so tired," muttered Yu desperately. "I'm…I'm exhausted. I'm sorry."

Minako shook her head. "No," she told him getting to her feet and reaching down to off him a hand up. "It's okay to be tired. I'm tired too. We're all so tired, but…but that's a good thing."

Yu took her hand and let her help haul him to his feet. "Why?" he asked.

"Because tired is real," said Minako. "Exhausted is real. Those are real feelings that belong to real people. We're real, Yu, and…and I don't think that we have anything to be ashamed of."

**Fin.**

**The Way It Was**

**Seventeenth Story: The Way It Was**

**Summary: **All she wanted was to be a family again, whatever that meant.

**Character Focus: **Yu, Nanako, Dojima, Adachi

"Pow! Bam!" yelled Nanako delightedly, as Icarus surrounded the shadow with a raging ball of flame. "Ooh, that was a shiny one!"

Yu, standing next to her, tried not to smile. It was, in fact, just a little bit creepy, seeing the pleasure that Nanako got out of blowing things up. He had told himself over and over again that she was only ten years old, and therefore far too young to really understand the concept of ending another creature's life. Or maybe, he thought, it was just that she wasn't able to see shadows as creatures, in the same way that he hadn't been before they'd all learned what Teddie really was.

"Boom!" announced Nanako. "Yay, I win!"

The shadow dissolved, incinerating into an explosion of red and black shadow essence. "Okay, Big Bro," said Nanako. "Your turn!"

Yu turned his attention to the other two shadows that were now slinking forward, attracted by the noise. He decided not to think too hard about the whole empathy thing. Yes, if Nanako was turning into an early childhood sociopath, then it probably was his fault, no matter how much he wanted to deny that, or wanted to blame Yosuke for having not kept her safe enough during her brief stint as the wild card. It was his fault, because the only reason Nanako had even been placed in that position was due to his actions, or rather, his inaction and his need for everyone else to pick up the slack.

"Whee!" sang Nanako, whizzing a ball of fire in the direction of one of the advancing shadows.

At least, thought Yu resignedly, she seemed to be having a good time.

"Nanako!" barked Dojima. "Look out, watch your left side!"

"Huh?" asked Nanako. "Oh, oops!" The second shadow, the one she hadn't been paying attention to suddenly lunged for that open left side, and Nanako tripped as she tried to scurry out of the way. Yu was there in a second, blocking the attack with his sword and then swiping forward, slashing the shadow across the face and sending it staggering back.

Behind them, Dojima breathed out a frustrated little sigh of relief. "Jeez…" he muttered.

From where he was lounging against a nearby wall, Adachi snickered. "Same old Dojima-san," he said. "Typical hard-ass, even on his own kid. Come on, I thought she was doing pretty well…for a ten year old, anyway. Give the kid a break."

Dojima didn't even bother to glare at him. "Shut up," he snarled.

Yu remarked to himself that this situation had gotten out of hand pretty fast. When Nanako had insisted on going into the TV world to train, determined to be just as much of a big kid as the rest of the team, Yu hadn't bothered to try and talk her out of it. Instead, he had volunteered to go with her, partially to make himself feel better, and partially to pacify Uncle Dojima. Unfortunately he'd failed in at least the latter goal, and Dojima had refused to let either of them back into the TV unless he was there to keep an eye on them.

Yu had almost hoped that having her Dad along would encourage Nanako to give up the adventure, but instead, she'd been delighted. Apparently she was very excited to have a chance to show Dad how good she could be at summoning her persona. Yu was just happy that she'd selected Icarus, who looked so innocent in comparison to the terrifying impression that Thanatos gave to anyone who watched him emerge from the inner workings of tiny little Nanako's soul. The last time he'd seen her summon Thanatos, Dojima had gone on a bender for almost three days, and it had been Yu who'd ended up picking him up off the floor and trying to talk him into the idea that even though Nanako was now wielding the skills of a slew of omnipotent monsters, she was still his little girl.

Everything had been going as well as could possibly be expected, until Nanako had insisted on going through the Velvet Room to say good morning to Adachi. Adachi, as usual, had been bored out of his mind, and had jumped at the chance to piss Dojima off as soon as he'd seen the beleaguered look on his former partner's face. Apparently intent for the very first time on completing his attendant's duties, he'd insisted on following them out into the TV world where he'd so far done nothing but watch and snigger from the sidelines. Between Adachi's snide commentary from the wings, and Nanako's eager and unguarded combat tactics, Dojima's face had already turned an alarming shade of rage-tinted red, much to Yu's alarm and Adachi's malicious delight.

"Hey, no fair," muttered Nanako, glaring at the shadow that had just had the audacity to attack her. Yu had Zao Gongen pound the shadow with God's Hand, smashing it and effectively dissolving it, leaving only one shadow remaining.

"Come on, Nanako," mumbled Dojima. "Haven't we had enough of this, yet? It's almost lunchtime. Aren't you hungry?"

"Nope!" Nanako shook her head. "Icarus," she called, "Heat wave!"

"Nice," muttered Adachi, raising an eyebrow and looking genuinely impressed as Icarus demolished the remaining shadow with a blast of energy that sliced it right through the middle. "You're getting pretty good at this, Nanako-chan. This is a hell of a lot better than that time against the snake shadow thing, anyway."

"Don't encourage her," growled Dojima.

Adachi gave him a belligerent look. "Why? Jeez, I bet a little encouragement is a nice change for her…not like she probably gets much of it from Dad, right?"

Dojima turned on Adachi, his face twitching with barely contained rancor, and Yu wasn't sure for a moment if Dojima was going to strike the other man, or just shout at him. Involuntarily, he winced.

"My teacher," interrupted Nanako wistfully, "always gives me a sticker when I do a good job. It's a star sticker."

She waited, watching her father expectantly, until both Dojima and Adachi turned to stare at her.

"What?" asked Adachi. "What, you want a sticker? Seriously? Where the hell am I supposed to get a sticker? Does this look like that kind of place to you?"

Nanako shrugged innocently. "It's the Velvet Room," she reminded him. "There's everything here."

Dojima was patting his pockets in frustration. "Used to keep them on me," he mumbled. "When you were a kid, we did that too…gave you gold stars every time you remembered to clean your room. I wonder what happened to those. I haven't seen them since before we lost your mother." Reaching into his pockets, he pulled them both out, revealing an impressive selection of lint balls, half a broken crayon, and a crumpled up piece of paper. He took out the piece of paper, smoothed it out, and then pulled something off of one end of it before shoving the paper, the crayon, and most of the lint back into his pocket. "Got some tape here," he said. "Sorry, that's all I-hey!"

Adachi reached over and snatched the piece of tape out of Dojima's fingers. "Let me see that," he said. "C'mere, Nanako-chan. You want a sticker? I'll make you a damn sticker."

Obediently, Nanako walked over, and Adachi stuck the piece of tape on to the sleeve of her jumper. A pen appeared out of nowhere between his fingers, and he began scribbling intently on the piece of tape. Nanako stayed very still and patient until he'd finished.

"There," he said. "A flower sticker. See?"

Nanako tried to peer down her own sleeve at the tape. "Thank you!" she said, beaming at him. "It's sort of a sticker! But, um, it was supposed to be a star."

Adachi sighed. "Right, yeah, a star, I forgot." Turning to Dojima, he asked, "you got another piece of tape?"

While Dojima and Adachi argued over the question of the tape, Yu watched Nanako's face. She spent a moment looking at the sticker, then caught Yu watching her out of the corner of her eye. Turning towards him, she gave him one of her most radiant little girl smiles. Yu was instantly suspicious. Something was up, here.

"You're the one that makes magic things appear out of the thin fucking air!" Dojima was yelling at Adachi, who flinched as the senior detective's voice rose. "So you get the goddamn tape, okay? This is ridiculous, why are we even here in the first place? Nanako, come on, we're leaving. I've gotta go into the station, there are things that-!"

Suddenly, Yu thought he saw something dark moving off in the corner. The shadow was on them in a single leap, catching Nanako totally by surprise and knocking her to the ground. She shrieked, and Yu was just about to summon back Zao Gongen and go in for the kill when three loud gunshots pierced the air. The shadow screamed in pain, and then burst into red and black essence, exploding where it stood.

For what felt like a very long moment, nobody moved.

"Damn," muttered Adachi. "The hell did that come from? I hate this place…" The gun in his hand was still smoking, and Magatsu Izanagi was looming up over his shoulder, peering down at Yu with that terrible, empty stare.

"Um…thank you, Adachi-san," murmured Nanako, looking a little bit shaken. She peeled the piece of tape off of her arm, and stuck it on to Adachi's sleeve. "I think you did the best job…so you're the one who gets the sticker. Should be a star, though…but a flower's good, too."

Adachi blinked at his sleeve. "Wait…ugh, really? What'd you have to go and do that for? Now there's gonna be that sticky shit all over my shirt…great."

As they began to walk back towards the Velvet Room door, Dojima snorted derisively. "Quit whining, Adachi. You know how many stickers I've had to peel off my jacket over the last ten years?"

Adachi looked thoughtful. "Yeah?" he asked. "Uh…so, you got any pointers?"

**Fin.**

**Commitment: Chapter One**

**Commitment**

**Summary: **Sooner or later, everyone has to pay their dues. She'd told Mitsuru that she couldn't leave because of the demands of her job. Now, it was time to actually get up, go back to work, and face the consequences.

**Character Focus: Minako, Dojima**

**Chapter One**

Eventually, Minako had to face it. She'd put it off for as long as she could, but that morning she woke up and realized for the first time in weeks that it was finally time to go to work.

Minako hadn't been to the station since her eyesight had returned, and she was a little bit horrified when she went through her closet and pulled out the skirts and blouses she'd been using as "work clothes." Most of them weren't exactly the colors or the styles that she'd been imagining, and her mental picture of what she'd looked like behind the desk warped now into something mismatched, garish, and stupidly unassuming. It took her several minutes to choose something that she felt looked professional enough to make a comeback in.

She brushed her teeth, did her hair, took a few deep, calming breaths, and then tried leaving the house.

Two paces outside the door, she froze. Every few seconds, the image of Dojima's furious face filled her mind's eye, and she re-lost her nerve to try going back in to see him.

Instead of going straight to work, therefore, she turned around, went back into the house, and stepped through into the TV.

Tohru was there in his chair, drumming miserable fingers against one cheek as he watched the door. Igor was there, too, and that, thought Minako, was probably the reason that Tohru wasn't up and running around killing shadows, or traipsing around and exploring the TV world the way he usually and restlessly did when left unsupervised for too long.

"Hey!" Tohru's face lit up and soon as he saw her, and he jumped out of his chair, dumping the Persona Compendium off his lap and on to the floor. Minako was sure she saw a vein bulge in Igor's temple as he bent down to retrieve the precious book.

Completely ignoring his reluctant "master," Tohru hurried over to Minako. He pulled her to him and kissed her, then stopped, frowned, and stepped back for a moment, raising an eyebrow.

"You want to seem e do a trick?" he asked.

Minako smiled. "I don't think there are any coins in my ear today, thank you."

"Nah." Tohru shook his head. "That's kid stuff. Today, I'm gonna read your future. You ready?"

"Ready," agreed Minako.

He made a big show of biting his lip, closing his eyes, and thinking so hard that it wrinkled is forehead for a long moment. Then, he opened his eyes, and nodded.

"Your day today…is gonna suck. Like…really suck," he informed her.

She sighed. "How did you guess?"

"You're dressed for work," he informed her. "You're going to the station, right? See? That right there, that was a brilliant, Tohru Adachi deduction. Uh…seriously, though, you going back in to the station? Really? That's…uh, maybe the worst idea I've heard all week. Not that I hear much from anybody but Creepy over here, but still." He shrugged

Minako frowned. "I don't have a choice," she insisted. "I have to go in eventually. I can't just keep hiding from it forever."

"Now that's where you're wrong," said Tohru. "Hey, I mean, you haven't gone in to work in how long? Three weeks? More? I'd say you lucked out. They've given up on you, why go back to them? This is your big chance to slack off and get a break without actually having to quit your job! What's not to love? It's a pretty good deal. I'd take it."

"I know you would," murmured Minako. "But I can't. I made a commitment."

"And," Tohru reminded her, "then…you broke it. Pretty spectacularly. Three weeks of unexcused absences…uh, the teacher's not gonna be too happy. Trust me, I used to work with the guy, and even I never took three whole weeks off in a row. Man, it's not pretty just thinking about how pissed of Dojima-san's gonna be. You're a brave little dumbass, you know? The brave little dumbass that could. Better off just sticking here, with me. It's…probably a safer move."

For a moment, Minako reflected with some wry amusement on the fact that Tohru Adachi, a notorious escaped murderer was now suggesting that it was safer to spend the day with him in a world that no one else knew existed than it would be to go in and face the wrath of her erstwhile boss.

"Thanks," she told him, "but actually, I was hoping for a little moral support."

Adachi sighed. "Yeah moral support, right. Um. Please don't die. If you do, I'll be bored as hell."

Minako rolled her eyes. It looked like that was the best moral support that she was likely to get.

"Don't worry," said Minako, as she made her way back towards the door. "If I see him looking murderous, I'll just find the nearest TV and jump into it. Then you can protect me."

Tohru snorted a derisive laugh. "You crazy? He'll probably follow you, and then we'll have him in here, mad as hell and bellowing at everybody. That's the only nice thing about being locked up – I don't have to deal with that! Nope, you're on your own this time."

"Oh," said Minako, sweetly and sarcastically. "Thank you so much."

"No problem." Tohru waved a hand dismissively at her, and sat back down in his chair. "Best of luck, you're gonna need it."

Minako sighed.

She walked to the bus stop and rode the bus all the way to the station, thinking the entire time of all the potential excuses she could make that might soften the blow even the littlest bit. She could say, of course, that she'd been feeling too sick and weak after the return of her persona to even think about coming to work in the morning. She could even, if she wanted, say that she'd actually told Dojima long ago that she'd have to take those three weeks off, and that he'd signed off on it and had just forgotten all about it in light of recent events. Most of the station staff would probably believe that, since it was the sort of thing that Dojima actually did on a regular basis.

In the end, though, none of it would do any good. Minako was sure of that, even if she wished she wasn't. Dojima knew the real reason, and had probably been turning that reason over in his head since the day of the big Velvet Room altercation. Minako was terrified of what his reaction would be to her lying for so long about Adachi. She'd been too much of a coward to face him, especially while she was dealing with Yosuke's vicious anger, and the disappointment and dislike of so many of the other people in Inaba who'd she considered close friends for so long.

At least they had been subtle about it, but Dojima wasn't familiar with the concept of subtlety. He'd do one of two things, definitely. He'd either give her the cold shoulder and blatantly refuse to work with her or anywhere near her, or he'd ream her out horribly in front of the entire station…possibly more than once. Perhaps he'd do it every time she had the misfortune to walk within shouting distance.

By the time she got off the bus outside the station, Minako had made her decision. There was nothing she could do but meet this head on with cold, hard honesty and remorse. That might not work, but there was nothing else worth trying.

With that firmly in mind, she pulled open the door, and took three, quick steps across the floor.

"Good morning!" she called, forcing a cheerful smile.

Around her, all activity ground to a halt. Everyone was staring. Minako felt herself deflate, just a bit.

**Commitment: Chapter Two**

**Chapter Two**

For just a moment, Minako wished that she was still blind. Back then, a silence like this one would have been terrible and frustrating. Now, however it was worse, because she could actually see all the startled faces of the employees watching her, and then turning to glance in confusion at each other while Minako took the very slow, very long walk all the way across the room towards Dojima's desk.

Dojima did not look startled. He did not look confused. He did not even look up from his paperwork. The only sign that Minako got of his being absolutely livid was the vein that had begun bulging in his temple, and the way his face was slowly turning an alarming shade of purplish red.

"Dojima-san," she murmured, although it came out much more softly and a bit more strangled than she'd intended. Minako's face was sweating.

Dojima didn't say anything. He didn't acknowledge her at all.

Okay, thought Minako. So, it's going to be the cold shoulder treatment. I can handle that. I was prepared for that. This is probably better than the shouting. The shouting is terrible, and gives me a headache, anyway.

She was relieved to see that there was no one sitting at her desk, since she'd sort of expected that they'd have found someone to fill her position by now. Then again, she reminded herself, this had been a position created specifically for her, a position that hadn't really been necessary in the first place but which Dojima had agreed to create mostly because Yu and Nanako had begged him to. That thought, if anything, made her feel much worse about the amount of work she'd missed.

As Minako sat down at her desk, the whir of activity slowly began again around the station. People began to lose interest in Minako, and to go back to whatever it is they were doing. Relieved, Minako let herself slump slightly in her seat. The worst, she decided, was probably over.

Seconds later, she was sure that she'd been wrong.

"Arisato!" bellowed Dojima. Minako sat up so straight that it hurt.

"Sir?" she asked. It came out in a squeak.

"Where the hell is my coffee?" demanded Dojima.

Bouncing up out of her seat like a rocket, Minako rushed off to get the coffee. Hey, she thought as she ran. At least he's talking to me, sort of. That's progress, right?

She made the coffee and then rushed back to Dojima's desk, placing it carefully down in front of her and then standing at attention while he took the first sip. He grunted, nodded, put it back down and then returned to his work, leaving Minako still awkwardly standing beside him.

Several minutes elapsed in silence before she decided to speak up. "Um, Dojima-san," she mumbled, "I…I'm sorry about…"

"Get back to your desk," snarled Dojima.

Minako blinked. "But, sir, please, if you'd just let me apologize, I'm sure that I owe you that, at least."

Dojima picked up the coffee again. He took another swig, slammed it down on to the table, and then told her, without even glancing in her direction, "I gave you an order, Arisato."

"You're angry," murmured Minako. "Of course you are, you have every right to be, I just wanted to tell you that I-!"

"I'm not angry." Dojima sighed, and spun around in his chair to face her for the first time. "Look, you do what you want. Either get back to you desk and start answering those damn phones, or get out. I don't need your apologies because it doesn't matter to me what you do. We don't need you, here. You're non-essential staff. So just make a decision and get out of my face, I have work to do, and so does everybody else."

He turned away from her again, disinterested, and Minako felt as though she'd been struck. "Yes, sir," she managed, before retreating back to her own desk and cowering in the chair.

She felt like an idiot, and a particularly self-interested one at that. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. Looking around at all the other station employees, she watched them going about their various tasks and arguing amongst themselves as the tempo of the station picked up and carried on as though there had never been an interruption, or she'd never come in to disrupt their daily routine. Somehow, this hadn't been what she'd expected, and now she felt foolish for having expected anything else.

He didn't even care that I'd stopped coming to work, she thought. He wasn't angry, he didn't miss me, and it didn't bother him at all,. It didn't bother any of them. Nobody cared. Maybe nobody even noticed until they saw me walk through the doors and realized just how long it had been since they'd seen me last. That's why he never came by the house or never even sent one of the others to check on me or shout at me. I'm irrelevant. Of course I am. I wasn't important around here from the start.

For a long moment, Minako contemplated leaving. Dojima had told her that she could go, and the ugly realization of being unwanted was mortifying enough to make her think that maybe she should take him up on his offer, and get out before this got any more unpleasant. After all, someone was bound to ask how she could magically see again, and suddenly all of the explanations she'd been practicing in her head seemed trite and stupid. She didn't want to bother with explaining.

Worse, she realized, they might not even ask. After all, they were busy people. What if no one thought it was important enough to even question her about? What if no one had really even noticed?

The phone chose that moment to ring. Minako's hand automatically shot out for it, and then she paused, glancing down at the phone uncertainly. She didn't have to take this call. She didn't have to do anything. After all, they didn't really want her here. At the moment, she didn't really want to be here.

But, said that little voice in the back of her mind, I haven't shown them yet. I haven't shown them what I'm capable of, now that I can see again and I can do all of the same things that they can do. Maybe I could be really good at this job. Maybe I could be really good at any job. I could be invaluable, now, and I could be worth something. Maybe I could make them notice me. Maybe I could make them forget that I was missing, this time, and make them think of me as part of the team.

The phone was still ringing. From across the room, heads were now turning to glance in Minako's direction, apparently wondering why she was just sitting there with a stupidly stoic look on her face and failing to answer the call.

She picked it up. "Good morning," she said, in what she hoped was her most pleasant phone voice. "Inaba Police Station. Is this an emergency?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she almost thought she saw


End file.
